Fiscal and budget policies, that came into force in 2007, have led to a break in the growth of investments by local authorities that coincided with the economic crisis. The decreased use of debt is to be evaluated as an indicator of reduced ability to invest rather than as a signal of improving...

The presence of possible distortions caused by a prolonged period of low interest rates indicates that policymakers should raise interest rates as soon as macroeconomic conditions allow. Low interest rates are good for macroeconomic stability in the short run, but could harm long-run financial...

The Final Report of the National Commission on the Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis in the United States was released on January 27th 2011.The strong political differences within the Commission prevented the draft of a shared report. In addition to the majority report, two dissenting...

The article contains the introduction to the meeting on the financial crisis held in February at the Accademia dei Lincei, by Alberto Quadro Curzio, president of the division of Moral Sciences of the Accademia. The introduction deals with three main topics: a brief account of the crisis, the...

The financial crisis of 2008 is put in relation with two bubbles, financial and housing. Easy credit is at the origin of both bubbles. Risky bonds were issued to mobilize mortgages originated in the housing market, and bad bonds entered a fantastic number of institutional and private portfolios...

Con questo numero, Moneta e Credito riprende la sua regolare cadenza trimestrale dopo l' interruzione connessa al passaggio di proprietˆ dalla Banca Nazionale del Lavoro alla Associazione Paolo Sylos Labini. Abbiamo tentato di colmare tale interruzione con i numeri speciali per il 2008 e per il...

In this paper a distinction is made between the immediate technical-financial causes that unleashed the crisis in the United States, and its macroeconomic causes, which also explain its international transmission. Two formal paradigmatic models are considered. The first is Li’s formula on...

The new supervisory regulation on insurance companies (Solvency II) defines capital requirements in line with actual risks of the enterprise. The three pillars of Solvency II are aimed to develop a wider culture of risk and a higher logical consistency between actual risk and business decisions.

In analyzing the options available to strengthen capitalization of Italian banks during the crisis, it is useful to build an evaluating system for cost/yield in different scenarios.The results of a simulation of so-called Tremonti bonds show that these are useful tools even if economic...

From the ongoing debate on the need to amend remuneration policies, two trends are emerging: one ethical, the other that considers the issue of incentives as a management tool that can influence operational efficiency. First of all, it is necessary to discuss the conditions that may enhance the...