We study the effects of the reform of the system of severance payments (TFR) of Italian employees on the cost and the access to credit for small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs). The most direct consequence of the reform is to reduce in the long run the amount of liquid assets available to...

When designing schemes to help SMEs survive crises, the government typically faces asymmetric information, so that it cannot target the SMEs most worth saving. We show that the government can exploit the information in the borrower loan demand to improve policy targets compared with existing...

A sizeable proportion of enterprises, especially SMEs, in receipt of financial assistance from the government, will fail to repay. In this paper we asked whether, and to what extent, it may be beneficial to apply a screening mechanism to deter those mostly likely to fail to repay from seeking...

We analyze financial support for the entrepreneurial sector. State support can raise welfare by relaxing financial constraints, but it can also reduce lending standards if entrepreneurs substitute public sources of collateral for their own assets, if it encourages excessive entrepreneurial...