Standardization of credit derivatives was a necessary step towards a more transparent and better structured market, especially after recent financial turmoil. In this survey, we sum up the enhancements established by ISDA in 2009, focusing on vanilla instruments (Credit Default Swaps). New...

I test the implications of borrower–lender physical and organizational distance for the loan default rate of Italian firms. I use a macro data set for the 1997–2011 period, which allows me to consider the effects of the international financial crisis too. I find that physical distance...

Using bank-level data for the period 1990–2005, we investigate to what extent European banks are able to shift their tax-burden forward. We examine the effects of corporate income tax (CIT) and value added tax (VAT) on pre-tax profits and their components, and find that both are shifted...

type="main" xml:lang="en" <p>This paper tries to contribute to the empirical literature on the European consumers’ plastic money payment habits, using the Bank of Italy data over the 1993–2008 period. In line with other evidence on this topic, mainly focused on the US economy, we find that age,...</p>

We study the forecasting performance of the Fourier volatility estimator in the presence of microstructure noise. Analytical comparison and simulation studies indicate that the Fourier estimator significantly outperforms realized volatility type estimators in particular for high frequency data...

The paper studies the motivations behind banks' shareholding of non-financial firms using a panel of large Italian companies in the period 1994-2000. Empirical evidence shows that banks are shareholders of companies that are less profitable, have experienced slower growth, are more indebted and...