A recent string of theoretical papers highlights the importance of geographical distance in explaining pricing and availability of loans to small firms. Lenders located in the vicinity of small firms have significantly lower monitoring and transaction costs, and hence considerable market power...

Calls for tenders are the natural devices to inform bidders, thus to enlarge the pool of potential participants. We exploit discontinuities generated by the Italian Law on tender’s publicity to identify the effect of enlarging the pool of potential participants on competition in public...