The recent economic and financial crisis has drawn attention to how mutual guarantee institutions (MGIs) facilitate small and medium enterprises in accessing bank financing. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, we describe the structural features of the Italian market for mutual guarantees...

This paper uses ECB survey data to assess whether gender matters in the small firms' financial structure and access to credit. Firms owned or managed by women (female firms) use smaller amounts and less heterogeneous sources of external finance than their male counterparts. According to...

Social capital is a key factor affecting the functioning of financial markets (Guiso, Sapienza and Zingales, 2004). However, the estimation of the effect of social capital on credit markets is notoriously difficult. In this paper we exploit the recent Lehman Brothers crisis and a rich dataset to...