We exploit highly disaggregated bank-firm data to investigate the dynamics of foreign vs. domestic credit supply in Italy around the period of the Lehman collapse, which brought a sudden and unexpected deterioration of economic conditions and a sharp increase in credit risk. Taking advantage of...

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...

This paper analyzes the ability of credit default swap spreads, bond spreads and stock prices to anticipate the decisions of the main rating agencies, for the largest international banks. Conditional on negative rating events, all the three indicators show signi�cant abnormal changes before...

This paper explores the implications of systemic risk in Credit Structured Finance (CSF). Risk measurement issues loomed large during the 2007-08 financial crisis, as the massive, unprecedented number of downgrades of AAA senior bond tranches inflicted severe losses on banks, calling into...

The aim of this paper is to analyze the selection process at work before and after compulsory schooling by assessing the determinants of school failures, dropouts and upper secondary school decisions of young Italians. The dataset is built combining individual data by the Labor Force Survey and...

We combine individual and aggregate-level level data on educational attainment to study the determinants of university drop-out in Italy, one of the worst performers among developed countries. Based on detailed information on a representative sample of secondary school graduates and on local...

The paper provides an analysis of the problems of construction of quality-adjusted price indexes within the framework of the theory of product differentiation. In the general case of price-making behaviour on the part of firms, hedonic regressions are defined on the basis of reduced forms of the...

Using a clustering procedure, we classify Italian funds ex-post on the basis of the composition of their portfolios and find that the optimal number of clusters is equal to 4. The four groups which result from the statistical classification closely match the 4-level aggregation of the 20 ex-ante...

In a bank-oriented country such as Italy, bank credit is by far the most important source of external finance for firms. The allocative efficiency of banks is therefore an important element underlying the overall performance of the economy. In this paper we focus on allocation across industrial...

The information content of stock prices is analysed without imposing strong restrictions on traders' preferences and the distribution of dividends. Noise in the information contained in equilibrium prices arises from endogenous asset supply, which offsets price movements due to informed trading....