This paper describes the results from a questionnaire administered to students of schools in the Emilia-Romagna Region who participated in the Banca d’Italia-Miur project in the field of economic and financial education during the 2016-7 school year. The results show a significant increase in...

We compare the spatial agglomeration of banks’ branches in Italy across local areas (as identified by local labor market areas) to that of other services. Banks branches appear to be only weakly spatially agglomerated, their spatial distribution being similar to that of other services and to...

This paper is concerned with spatial agglomeration across industrial sectors in Italy. Following the seminal article by Ellison and Glaeser, agglomeration indexes that simultaneously control for the effect of chance and size structure of industries are presented. In particular, I compute...

We use Italian firm-level data to investigate the impact of trade openness on the distribution of firms across marginal cost levels. In so doing, we implement a procedure that allows us to control not only for the standard transmission bias identified in firm-level TFP regressions but also for...

We use Italian firm-level data to investigate the impact of trade openness on the distribution of firms across marginal cost levels. In so doing, we implement a procedure that allows us to control not only for the standard transmission bias identified in firm-level TFP regressions but also for...

This paper analyses how banks organize their lending activity in two surveys carried out in 2006 and in 2009. During this period, the use of rating and scoring methodologies became more widespread even among smaller banks. Larger banks used these techniques more frequently when pricing their...

A recent strand of the literature shows that the adoption of different lending technologies is associated with heterogeneous credit policies and performance. Using a unique Bank of Italy?s survey, specifically designed to capture some organizational features and the lending techniques adopted by...

The paper provides new, more detailed evidence on the productivity of manufacturing firms across Italian local labour markets by analysing a large firm-level database covering the 1995-2006 period. The analysis identifies two types of highly agglomerated areas - large cities and industrial...

Two main hypotheses are usually put forward to explain the productivity advantages of larger cities: agglomeration economies and firm selection. Combes et al. (2012) propose an empirical approach to disentangle these two effects and fail to find any impact of selection on local productivity...

Switching costs are a key determinant of market performance. This paper tests their existence in the corporate loan market in which they are likely to play a central role because of the complexity of contracts and the relevance of informational problems. Using very detailed data at bank–firm...