We examine the effects of the government guarantee schemes for bank bonds adopted in the aftermath of the Lehman Brothers demise to help banks retain access to wholesale funding. We describe the evolution and the pattern of bond issuance across countries to assess the effect of the schemes. Then...

We analyse the wide array of rescue programmes adopted in several countries, following Lehman Brothers� default in September 2008, in order to support banks and other financial institutions. We first provide an overview of the programmes, comparing their characteristics, magnitudes and...

Insurance companies and pension funds are part of complex systems of private insurance and public social protection created to reduce the cost of economic hazards. In the current phase of the business cycle, with many OECD countries struggling with low economic growth, high public deficits and...

Theory suggests that people facing higher uninsurable background risk buy more insurance against other risks that are insurable. This proposition is supported by Italian cross-sectional data. Its shown that the probability of purchasing casualty insurance increases with earnings uncertainty.

The paper looks at the characteristics of Italian non-financial firms that accessed the bond market for the first time between 2002 and 2013. The results of logit estimations indicate that first-time bond issuers are significantly larger and more frequently listed on the stock exchange than...

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),...

Small firms encounter difficulties in raising external finance owing to greater information problems. For small innovative firms, whose activity is more difficult to evaluate, the cost of external finance could be even higher. This paper examines special features of the financial structure of...