The increasing degree of flexibility in the labour market, is revealed, in Italy, by the development of a new category of temporary workers, called parasubordinati. In order to identify and quantify this phenomenon, an empirical analysis, based on the data of the Italian Social Security...

Recent pension reforms in Italy require individuals to decide whether to participate in pension funds, how much to contribute, and how to invest their wealth, raising concerns about their ability to deal with financial matters. Using the Bank of Italy's Survey on Household Income and Wealth...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of the 2007 Italian severance payment reform on the cost and the access to credit for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Design/methodology/approach – The authors study the implications of the reform adapting the theoretical...

The low level of financial literacy across households suggests that they are at risk of making suboptimal financial decisions. In this paper, we analyze the effect of investors’ financial literacy on their decision to demand professional, non-independent advice. We find that non-independent...

The paper analyzes the bank loans secured by recently incorporated small-sized firms based on a sample of Italian companies founded between 1992 and 2004. The study shows that the amount of the loan issued is influenced primarily by the size of the firm and the ability to provide collateral,...