The paper investigates whether firms have better access to bank credit in areas with a larger degree of urbanization. It uses bank-firm data drawn from the Credit Register maintained at the Bank of Italy to devise an indicator of ease of access to credit. The paper proposes an instrumental...

In this paper we investigate whether new exporter firms have a higher probability of starting to export to the countries where their financing banks have already established their branches. The underlying mechanism we hypothesize is based on the transmission of foreign market knowledge from...

We exploit Italian Central Credit Register data to investigate the effectiveness of subsidized credit programs for public financing to firms via the banking system. The effect of public incentives depends on the availability of financial resources for the beneficiary firms. Financially...