This paper provides new estimates of cost scale economies for Italian banks, based on a model of bank production that takes into account a comprehensive definition of output including different categories of loans, deposits, off-balance sheet items, payment services, and brokerage and asset...

The aim of this survey is to provide a rigorous, but not so technical, introduction to several systemic risk indicators frequently used in official publications by institutions involved in macroprudential analysis and policy. The selected indicators are classified using three taxonomies. The...

The aim of this survey is to provide a rigorous, but not so technical, introduction to several systemic risk indicators frequently used in official publications by institutions involved in macroprudential analysis and policy. The selected indicators are classified using three taxonomies. The...

Interchange fees (IF) are fees that a cardholder's bank (issuer) receives from the merchant's bank (acquirer) when a card payment is executed. Interchange fees are an important part of the fees charged to merchants by acquirers. Because of their level and fragmentation, interchange fees can...

We analyse the wide array of rescue programmes adopted in several countries, following Lehman Brothers' default in September 2008, in order to support banks and other financial institutions. We first provide an overview of the programmes, comparing their characteristics, magnitudes and...

Economic activity is concentrated in urban areas and during the 20th century the urban population grew at a faster rate than the national average in many countries. Why is this the case? In this paper we focus on the urban premium in firms' productivity. We run two exercises. First, we document...

We analyse the evolution of capital and labour (mis)allocation across firms in five euro-area countries (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Spain) and eight main sectors of the economy during the period 2002-2012. Three key stylized facts stand out. First, in all countries except Germany,...

We study growth dynamics of firms before and during the financial crisis. We find that firms born during the recession display lower growth overtime in capital, employment and revenue, despite being more productive at entry than those born in normal times. We show that this pattern can be...

This note shows the consequences of different methodological choices for the estimates of the incidence of zombie firms in Italy. We use as a benchmark the influential measure proposed by the OECD (Adalet McGowan et al. 2017a and 2017b) which identifies zombie firms based on a combination of...

Italian Abstract: Questo lavoro presenta una metodologia per ricostruire la spesa energetica delle imprese manifatturiere italiane con almeno 20 addetti per il periodo 2003-2011. Si utilizzano una pluralità di fonti per imputare i consumi fisici di energia a livello di impresa nell'archivio...