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,...

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...

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...

This paper provides an assessment of the costs of complying with Basel III for the Italian economy. The main findings are the following. For each percentage point increase in the capital ratio implemented over an eight-year horizon, the level of GDP would decline by 0.00-0.33% (0.03-0.39% if...

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 aim of the present note is to outline a general, but at the same time comprehensive, framework of the array of instruments that regulators can use in their activity of prudential regulation and supervision. Such a framework should be applicable to a variety of geographical and historical...

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...

This paper studies the effects of differences in local administrative burdens in Italy in the years preceding a major reform that sped up firm registration procedures. Combining regulatory data from a survey on Italian provinces before the reform (costs and time to start a business) with...