We investigate the duration of bad loans for a unique data set of sole proprietorships in Italy, finding that bad loans for female firms last longer. However, this result is mainly due to the fact that loans granted to female firms are less frequently written off than those to male ones,...

This paper provides an explanation for the postponement of youth emancipation in the Italian context mainly characterized by a sharp increase in both house and rent prices together with stagnant disposable income over the past decade. We first assemble a unique database related to the housing...

We estimate the causal effect of immigrants' legal status on criminal behavior exploiting exogenous variation in migration restrictions across nationalities driven by the last round of the European Union enlargement. Unique individual-level data on a collective clemency bill enacted in Italy...

This paper assesses the effectiveness of Law 215/1992, an incentive scheme intended to boost female entrepreneurship in Italy. Under the law, which was only implemented in 1997 and remained in force for a decade, the allocation of subsidies among the regions was inversely proportional to their...

The literature on debt restructuring usually assumes that banks behave in a uniform way towards firms in distress. Using a recent survey of Italian banks, we show that banks follow different strategies when they decide whether to take part in the workout process, in that some of them do...

A remarkable feature of short-term business finance is the widespread use of trade credit as collateral in bank borrowing, especially by small and medium-sized firms. The paper models the incentives for a firm to collateralize accounts receivable as a trade-off between the benefit from lower...

Financial innovation has increased opportunities for diversification and lowered investment costs, but has not reduced the relative cost of active (informed) investment strategies compared with passive (less informed) strategies. What are the consequences? I have studied an economy with linear...

The two recessions that have hit Italy since the end of 2008 have raised the share of non-performing loans to businesses in banks� portfolios substantially. In this paper we evaluate to what extent the deterioration of credit quality was due not only to the decline in firms� sales...

High concentration of creditors can have two beneficial effects on borrowers: i) by enhancing lenders� ability to monitor, it can reduce the likelihood of financial distress; ii) by reducing coordination failure among creditors, it can help a distressed firm to avoid bankruptcy. However, a...

This publication collects the papers presented at the workshop entitled "The sovereign debt crisis and the euro area", held at the Bank of Italy in Rome on 15 February 2013. In recent years the Economic Research and International Relations Area of the Bank of Italy has conducted several analyses...