This paper summarizes the results attained by the Eurosystem in harmonizing the statistics used for the conduct of monetary policy. Since the creation of the euro area, in January 1999, significant progress has been made in the harmonization of data on banks’ balance sheets, central banks and...

This paper analyses the business cycle properties of 183 time series relevant to the Italian economy, including real, monetary and international variables. We propose new monthly coincident and leading composite indicators for the Italian business cycle; the leading indicator anticipates the...

The paper presents the new data collection and the estimation methodology for the external statistics, the results of the comparison between the old and the new data in the overlapping period and the evolution of the Italian balance of payments and international investment position since the...

This paper analyses the business cycle properties of 183 time series relevant to the Italian economy, including real, monetary and international variables. We propose new monthly coincident and leading composite indicators for the Italian business cycle; the leading indicator anticipates the...

This paper investigates the effects of subsidies on the investment decisions of a sample of Italian manufacturing firms. We use survey information on firms� subjective evaluations of the investment they would have undertaken without financing, finding that subsidies have limited...

We investigate the impact of information and communication technologies (ICT) on local loan officers� autonomy in small business lending. We derive a simple agency model of the interaction between a local branch manager and the headquarters, which yields an estimable equation for the...

We analyze the problem of strategic poaching of consultants by clients with particular reference to the business consulting industry. This article presents a market equilibrium in a mixed economy where three categories of agents, consulting groups, client firms and consultants strategically...