The main idea of this paper is that bank internationalization might encourage exports as banks' foreign branches and representative offices provide financial and informational support to exporting firms. This hypothesis has been tested using bank and firm data at Italian province-level between...

Using unique matched bank-firm data on export, import and ordinary loans for a large sample of Italian manufacturing exporters for the years 2007-2010, this paper investigates the role of trade finance in a credit shock. We find that the credit shock faced by exporters in the aftermath of the...

We provide an in-depth analysis of Italy's export performance relative to the other main euro-area countries over the last two decades, using both macro and micro data. We argue that the relatively unsatisfactory performance of Italian goods exports until the eve of the 2008-09 crisis is the...