The recent financial crisis has revived the debate on deposit insurance. Public awareness of its existence is essential in order to prevent a bank run. Analysing the results of three questions on this topic introduced in the last Survey on Household Income and Wealth, this paper investigates...

The financial crisis that started in August 2007 has led to a worsening in the conditions of credit supply to customers. Since the second half of 2008, several measures have been adopted in order to sustain access to credit for both firms and households, such as debt moratoria, provisions of...

This paper investigates trends in Italian households� saving and wealth in the last twenty years, with a special emphasis on the period immediately following the financial crisis in 2008. The analysis is based on data from the Italian Survey on Household Income and Wealth (1991-2010). The...

Which households use consumer credit? This paper addresses the question using harmonized data from Eurostat�s EU-SILC survey for nine European countries in the period 2005-08. There is wide heterogeneity in participation in the consumer credit market, ranging from 15 to 46 per cent across...

The lag in innovation in Italy vis-�-vis the other main industrial countries is one of the effects of the fragmentation of the production system into many small firms that have trouble bearing the high cost of R&D and taking the related risks. Such other causes as shortages in human capital...

After the crisis, from 2008 to 2010 the share of indebted households decreased both owing to a reduction in loan demand and stricter supply conditions. The reduction regarded mortgages and involved low-income households and the self-employed. Recourse to consumer credit remained stable; it...

The study analyses trends in the market for consumer credit during the crisis, relying on data by CRIF referring to demand for personal and special-purpose loans and to contracts signed between 2007 and 2013 in Italy (55 and 37 million respectively). The analysis shows how the sharp reduction in...

Half a decade of crisis has had a substantial impact on the market for credit to Italian households. From 2008 through 2012 the share of indebted households decreased by 4 percentage points, to 23 per cent; among young households it fell by 12 points. The decline involved consumer credit and...

The recent economic and financial crisis has drawn attention to how mutual guarantee institutions (MGIs) facilitate small and medium enterprises in accessing bank financing. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, we describe the structural features of the Italian market for mutual guarantees...

We investigate the duration of bad loans for a unique data set of sole proprietorships in Italy, finding that bad loans for female firms last longer. However, this result is mainly due to the fact that loans granted to female firms are less frequently written off than those to male ones,...