Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Creditworthiness and credit risks -- Between promise and peril : credit and debt at the pearl fisheries of South India and Sri Lanka, c. 1800 / Sam Ostroff -- Lenders and borrowers in a non-capitalist economy : Rio de Janeiro in the early nineteenth century /...

We propose a joint dating of the Italian business and credit cycle on a historical horizon, by applying a local turning-point dating algorithm to the level of the variables. Along with short cycles, corresponding to traditional business cycle fluctuations, we also investigate medium cycles,...

This paper uses data from a panel of more than 400 Italian banks for the period 2001 - 2012 to examine the main determinants of loan loss provision (LLP), which are classified as either discretionary (income smoothing, capital management, signalling) or non-discretionary (related to the business...