The paper assesses the extent to which mortgage rates in Italy are priced according to credit risk as proxied by the probability of household mortgage delinquency estimated using the EU-Silc database. For reasons of data availability we restrict the analysis of mortgage pricing to Italian...

Poverty is generally defined as income or expenditure insufficiency, but the economic condition of a household also depends on its real and financial asset holdings. This paper investigates measures of poverty that rely on indicators of household net worth. We review and assess two main...

The issue of the importance of financial constraints in hampering the birth of new entrepreneurs is still debated. One of the way to identify financial constraints is to look at the importance of household wealth in the decision to become an entrepreneur. In the absence of correlation between...

This paper analyzes whether in Italy the price of consumer loans is based on borrower specific risk. Mispricing could threat financial stability through negative effects on lenders' profitability; risk-based pricing also leads to a more efficient allocation of credit through lower prices for...

In the absence of any correlation between wealth and entrepreneurial talent, initial net wealth should have an explanatory power in the decision to become an entrepreneur only for households that are financially constrained; further, its importance should decrease with wealth. I test these...

Small firms encounter difficulties in raising external finance owing to greater information problems. For small innovative firms, whose activity is more difficult to evaluate, the cost of external finance could be even higher. This paper examines special features of the financial structure of...

Italian startups financed by venture capitalists (VCs) experience a faster growth in size and become more innovative compared with other startups. VC-backed firms also show a much larger increase in equity and a reduction in their leverage. This evidence is obtained by comparing a representative...

This paper evaluates the causal effect of issuing equities on the probability that a firm will engage in R&D activity. Equity is a preferable source of external finance for innovation than debt. It does not require collateral, does not exacerbate moral hazard problems connected with the...