Why do some countries suffer from backward financial institutions and weak corporate governance rules? We show that, even if, overall, the economy would benefit corporate governance reforms, not all the agents would stand to gain from the improvement. In particular, entrepreneurs and firms that...

We provide an assessment of the determinants of the risk premium paid by non-financial corporations on long-term bonds. By looking at 5,500 issues in the period 2005-2012, we find that the turbulence in the sovereign debt market has been a major driver of corporate risk in recent years. Compared...

The topic of financing long-term investment is on the top of the agenda of economic policy makers and it is among the priorities of the Italian Presidency of the European Union. The paper describes the main international initiatives in the field and highlights the three most promising courses of...

The paper describes the characteristics of the market for private placements and discusses the necessary conditions for their uptake in Europe. A private placement is a method of financing used mainly by medium-sized companies which, unable to access the public bond market, turn to one or more...

In this paper we examine the main aspects of Italian factoring market and its evolution during last two decades. Moreover, we analyze the characteristics of firms accessing this kind of financing. In Italy factoring market size is the third in the world in absolute terms (amount of turnover),...

In this paper we investigate the relationship between the number of lawyers and civil litigation across Italian provinces over the period 2000-2005. First, we document the existence of a positive correlation between the number of lawyers and litigation. We then employ a 2SLS approach to verify...

The correlation between the socio-economic status of parents and their offspring has emerged as one of the stylized facts in economics, though cross-country and cross-occupation variation is remarkable. However, part of the underlying mechanism behind intergenerational persistence remains to be...

The full insurance hypothesis states that shocks to the firm's performance do not affect workers' compensation. In principal-agent models withmoral hazard, firms trade off insurance and incentives to induce workers to supply the optimal level of effort. We use a long panel of matched...

The paper focuses on the creation of information for decision-making when agents' effort is non observable and rewards are indirect, that is, only based on the final decision. Following Dewatripont and Tirole (1999), the paper shows that the creation of advocates of special interests, as opposed...

This paper analyzes the characteristics of Italian firms involved in global value chains (�intermediate� firms) by using the Bank of Italy survey on industrial companies. Intermediate firms show, on average, worse features than �final� firms: smaller size, lower share of...