This paper tests the effect of founder's tenure on firm performance by taking into account the impact of the changes occurring in the economic environment. We use a large dataset of founder-run firms that includes, in addition to financial data, company data directly collected through a survey...

Empirical evidence of the distribution of firms based on owner identity for a set of European countries reveals substantial differences. Using the sensitivity of a firm's sales to demand shocks as a measure of risk-taking behavior, the paper explores if owner identity affects the willingness of...

We test the hypothesis that the identity of the owner affects firm ability to seize market opportunities differently according to the firm's actual vs. "optimal" size (size gap). By grouping firms in size clusters having a similar probability of adopting a size-adjusting strategy (growth or...

In this paper we empirically test the recent lender-based theory for the use of collateral in bank lending. Based on a proprietary dataset of loan contracts written by a local bank in competitive credit markets, we use the physical proximity between borrowers and the lending branch of the bank...

This paper examines how banks around the world have resized and reallocated their earning assets in response to the subprime and sovereign debt crises. We also focus on the interaction between sovereign debt and the asset allocation process. We find that banks have readjusted asset shares and...

Questo lavoro analizza le diverse fasi della recente crisi economico-finanziaria, ponendo l'accento sull'entita' del credit crunch in Italia e nel resto d'Europa, al fine di cogliere le similitudini ma, soprattutto, le differenze tra i paesi centrali e quelli periferici ell'area dell'euro, tra i...

Government intervention in credit markets has been criticized as potentially conducive to distortions in the behaviour of both banks and firms. We argue that credit subsidies may lead to a decline in the level of screening performed by banks. This effect was at work in Italy in the early 1990s...

This paper shows evidence on the real effects of the bank lending channel exploiting the dramatic 2007 liquidity drought in interbank markets as a source of variation in banks' credit supply. For a large sample of Italian firms we combine information on firm-bank credit relationships, firms and...

Questo paper analizza in che misura i confidi siano riusciti a limitare i problemi di accesso al credito da parte delle piccole imprese durante la crisi.;Dapprima vengono discusse le principali trasformazioni registrate dalla struttura del settore dei confidi negli anni recenti e le evidenze...

Recent years have seen an intense and critical debate about the impact of microcredit on entrepreneurial activities and poor households' welfare. This paper suggests that information asymmetries in the ex-post loan arrangement between the microfinance institution (MFI) and local borrowers could...