Italian savings is a necessary condition for economic growth and employment development and for this reason it deserves respect and appreciation. It must be supported both by the State and banks and financial intermediaries with initiatives aimed to improve communication, financial education and...

The establishment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is part of the Us financial system reform project and has been strongly supported by the Obama administration to streamline the existing rules and to realize consumer financial education and protection after the crisis. It testifies,...

The conclusions of the Vickers Report, broadly accepted by the Uk government, put the country on the forefront of the reform movement affecting banking supervision. The traditional British light regulatory touch, this time, has given way to a decisive crackdown, mainly due to the effects of the...

The recent changes to the Italian bankruptcy law aim to promote the use of restructuring agreements in corporate crisis management, in order to facilitate business continuity. However, the new procedure presents some operational difficulties that need to be clarified by the operating practices....

The Basel deadlines concerning the second pillar and the international crisis have emphasized the problem of a reliable measure of the credit concentration risk. Nevertheless, there is not yet a best practice and several approaches have been proposed. After a survey about the framework, the...

The corporate governance of Italian listed companies showed significant changes in the last fifteen years under the impulse of self-regulation initiatives, legislative innovations and market discipline. The market pressure together with the increasing dissemination of selfregulation good...

Many indicators have been developed at international level to evaluate the quality of corporate governance. In this paper, the fundamental elements and limitations of existing indicators are discussed. Among these indicators, particular attention has been focused on the Gim Index, an index...

The National Fund for Innovation is a public policy instrument that is showing a significant capacity in supporting Italian Smes. It is also functional to stimulate the activation of virtuous circles in local economies, but with different effects in the various geographical areas. In particular,...

In 2011, Italian businesses and households have faced the Sovereign debt crisis, but savings confirmed its resilience. Since the beginning of the crisis, Italian households’ propensity to save has fallen nearly 1.8 percentage points, although Italy continues to rank above most other...

Despite the decline during the crisis, Italian households savings rate is in line with major European countries and higher than Us and Uk. Conservative portfolios allowed, during the crisis, to contain volatility and to protect wealth, but they are not an optimal choice for recovery. It is...