Introduction -- The costs and benefits of protecting creditor rights: theory and evidence / Atilano Jorge Padilla and Alejandro Requejo -- Information sharing in credit markets: theory and evidence / Tullio Jappelli and Marco Pagano -- The political economy of debt moratoria, bailouts and...

Theory predicts that information sharing among lenders attenuates adverse selection and moral hazard, and can therefore increase lending and reduce default rates. We construct a new international data set on credit bureaus and public credit registers. The theoretical predictions are broadly...

In most of the postwar period Italy featured an abnormally high saving rate in comparison to that of most other industrialized countries. But this is no longer true. Under any definition, in the last decade the Italian saving rate has fallen below the average of the developed economies. Why was...