Uncertainty in banking regulation may impose widespread economic costs by increasing fi nancialconstraints on credit availability. Four years of Dodd Frank uncertainty over undecided riskweightings increased regulatory uncertainty for smaller banks, restricting "vanilla" interest ratehedging...

The analysis highlights the aspects of diversified market structures and of local, low-distance banking as advantageous for financial stability. Heterogeneity protects from uniform market behaviour. Local banking can better overcome the problem of asymmetric information, particular in SME...

This paper investigates the effectiveness of public credit guarantee programs and interest-support programs for SMEs (small and medium enterprises). First, assuming that there is an imperfect information structure in the SME loan market, we analyze how SME support financial programs affect the...

Difficulties in finding appropriate financing weigh heavily on the ability to grow of Italy’s small enterprises, due to their narrow equity base and limited access to credit markets. The State Fund for guarantees to SMEs is one of the instruments used to overcome such difficulties. This essay...

Using data for the Italian Central Guarantee Fund for Small and Medium Enterprises, the paper analyses the effect of partial credit guarantees on firms’ financing. We show that neglecting heterogeneity in guarantee intensities, namely considering all firms as equally treated, leads to a...

How do concentration and competition in the European banking sector affect lending relationships between small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and their banks? Recent empirical evidence suggests that concentration and competition capture different characteristics of banking systems. Using a...