We test whether a simple measure of corporate insolvency based on equity return volatility - and denoted as Distance to … Insolvency (DI) - delivers better predictions of corporate default than the widely-used Expected Default Frequency (EDF) measure …

's prosperity. The paper focuses on political events in Italy over the past 35 years and asks whether the adoption of the euro in … 1999 has helped insulate Italy's financial markets from the adverse consequences of its traditionally unstable political … system. We find that important political events have exerted a statistically and economically significant effect on Italy …