The financial crisis that started in August 2007 has led to a worsening in the conditions of credit supply to customers. Since the second half of 2008, several measures have been adopted in order to sustain access to credit for both firms and households, such as debt moratoria, provisions of...

The paper describes the characteristics of the market for private placements and discusses the necessary conditions for their uptake in Europe. A private placement is a method of financing used mainly by medium-sized companies which, unable to access the public bond market, turn to one or more...

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 topic of financing long-term investment is on the top of the agenda of economic policy makers and it is among the priorities of the Italian Presidency of the European Union. The paper describes the main international initiatives in the field and highlights the three most promising courses of...

This paper studies the provision of incentives in a universal bank. This is regarded as a (common) agent serving different clients with potentially conflicting interests; for example, it may buy assets on behalf of investors and sell assets on behalf of issuing firms. The clients offer incentive...

Using a unique data set, this paper describes the main features of the venture capital industry in Italy. Operations by Italian specialised venture capitalists are only in part devoted to small, young firms from advanced industries, have a rather short duration and are weakly focused on a few...

This paper examines the current tax policy on venture capital (VC) in Italy, and compares it with the tax incentives adopted by France, Germany, Spain and the UK. The authors analyze ongoing European initiatives to remove tax obstacles to VC in Europe. Focusing on the taxation of VC funds, they...

The analysis of the determinants and the effects on firm performance of venture capital finance for a sample of Italian enterprises indicates that small, young and more innovative firms are more likely to be financed by a venture capitalist. Our results confirm that venture capital can help...

This paper examines private equity and venture capital in Italy. The first part looks at the main features of the Italian market and its recent evolution; the second part considers the results of a survey of firms and intermediaries designed to gather information regarding contract features and...

The Italian economy has suffered from structural problems for the last fifteen years, which have weakened its competitiveness. The innovation gap, by international standards, is one of those problems. Business incubators are one of the solutions proposed in the economic literature and put into...