The paper analyzes the role of guarantees on loan interest rates before and during the recent financial crisis in Italian firm financing. The paper improves on existing literature by distinguishing between real and personal guarantees. Further, the paper investigates the potential different role...

Preface -- 1 SME and Entrepreneurship Policies After the Crisis -- 2 The Italian Small- and Medium-Sized Firms in the Aftermath of the Crisis: Is there a New Model? -- 3 Industrial Policy for SMEs Renewal: The Opportunity of Service Platforms -- 4 Product Inovation and Corporate Governance in...

This paper presents two views of the European sovereign debt crisis. The first is that the South in the euro zone has been fiscally irresponsible, and has failed to implement supply-side policies such as liberalizing labor markets and the market for services. The second view holds that the...

This paper analyzes financial contagion in a banking system where banks are linked by interbank claims and common assets. We find that asset commonality makes banking systems more vulnerable to idiosyncratic shocks and helps to determine which interbank network structures are resistant to...