A growing number of studies on the US subprime market indicate that, due to asymmetric information, credit risk transfer activities have perverse effects on banks' lending standards. We investigate a large part of the market for securitized assets (“prime mortgages”) in Italy, a country with...

This paper investigates how bank profitability is affected by corporate income tax (CIT) using aggregate data on the banking sector of the main industrialized countries for the period 1981-2003. Two main novelties emerge with respect to the existing literature. First, the paper explicitly...

Using credit register data for loans to Italian firms we test for the presence of asymmetric information in the securitization market by looking at the correlation between the securitization (risk-transfer) and the default (accident) probability. We can disentangle the adverse selection from the...

This paper analyzes the effects of the financial crisis on credit supply by using highly detailed data on bank-firm relationships in Italy after Lehman's collapse. We control for firms' unobservable characteristics, such as credit demand and borrowers' risk, by exploiting multiple lending. We...

Using a new monthly dataset on bank-level lending rates, we study the transmission of conventional and unconventional monetary policy in the euro area via shifts in the supply of credit. We find that a bank lending channel is operational for both types of measures, though its functioning...

Why do residential mortgages carry a fixed or an adjustable interest rate? To answer this question we study unique data from 103 banks belonging to 73 different banking groups across twelve countries in the euro area. To explain the large cross-country and time variation observed, we distinguish...

We exploit highly disaggregated bank-firm data to investigate the dynamics of foreign vs. domestic credit supply in Italy around the period of the Lehman collapse, which brought a sudden and unexpected deterioration of economic conditions and a sharp increase in credit risk. Taking advantage of...

The model developed in this paper extends the framework of self-fulfilling credit market freezes proposed by Bebchuk and Goldstein (2011) by endogenizing firms' investments decisions. The existence of an aggregate investment threshold below which individual investment projects are unsuccessful...

We present the first empirical study of information spillover and signalling on loan search and its outcomes in a setting where a bank observes whether a loan applicant has already been rejected by other lenders. We do so by taking advantage of the fact that Italy's Central Credit Register...

We find evidence of a bank lending channel for the euro area operating via bank risk. Financial innovation and the new ways to transfer credit risk have tended to diminish the informational content of standard bank balance-sheet indicators. We show that bank risk conditions, as perceived by...