A growing number of studies on the US subprime market indicate that, due to asymmetric information, credit risk transfer activities have perverse effects on banks� lending standards. We investigate a large part of the market for securitized assets (�prime mortgages�) in Italy, a...

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....

Is deregulation sufficient to grant free entry in local credit markets? Economic theory suggests at least two ways in which asymmetric information between incumbents and entrants can work as an endogenous barrier to entry. First, entrants� pool of applicants contains a larger share of...

In this paper we present two statistical approaches for discussing and modelling job satisfaction based on data collected in the Survey on Household Income and Wealth (SHIW) conducted by the Bank of Italy. In particular, we compare two different classes of model for ordinal data: the Ordinal...

During the last decades there has been a widespread relaxation of legal entry barriers into the banking industry, with potential benefits for financial integration and competition. Obstacles to banks' geographical and business expansion have been removed and branching has been substantially...

Using a very large panel dataset of Italian manufacturing firms, we test an empirical model of foreign markets participation with sunk costs. The period of analysis (1982-1999) is exceptionally informative: the large fluctuations in the lira exchange rate determined substantial flows of firms in...

the paper evaluates the existence of segmentation in the Italian labour market along the lines of the dual labour market theory. It shows that even workers belonging to traditionally strong groups - such as male, head of family, in the central classes of age may be confined in the secondary...

The ECB objective of price stability is given a quantitative content as a year-on-year growth rate in the euro area HICP close but below 2% over the medium term. While this objective is referred to area-wide price developments, in anticipating monetary policy moves, market analysts pay...

Empirical researchers usually prefer statistical models that can be easily estimated using standard software packages. One such model is the sequential binary model with or without normal random effects; such models can be adopted to estimate discrete duration models with unobserved...

The negative association between fertility and female labour market participation is complicated by the endogeneity of fertility. We address this problem by using an exogenous variation in family size caused by infertility shocks, mainly related to the fact that nature prevents some women from...