Using information on about 2 million house purchase loans to households, this paper analyses the effects of the financial crisis on this portion of the credit market. From 2008 to 2011 the total number and value of new mortgages decreased sharply. The results show that young households and...

The paper presents the main results of the Eurosystem's Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) with an emphasis on the data for Italy in the international context. The paper examines households' socio-demographic characteristics, assets and income distribution, participation in real and...

This paper evaluates the causal effect of issuing equities on the probability that a firm engages in R&D activity. Equity is a better source of external finance than debt for innovation. It does not require collateral, does not exacerbate moral hazard problems connected with the substitution of...

This report analyses the main developments in housing finance in the euro area in the decade, covering the period from 1999 to 2007. It looks at mortgage indebtedness, various characteristics of loans for house purchase, the funding of such loans and the spreads between the interest rates on...

This report analyses the main developments in housing finance in the euro area in the decade, covering the period from 1999 to 2007. It looks at mortgage indebtedness, various characteristics of loans for house purchase, the funding of such loans and the spreads between the interest rates on...

Poverty is generally defined as income or expenditure insufficiency, but the economic condition of a household also depends on its real and financial asset holdings. This paper investigates measures of poverty that rely on indicators of household net worth. We review and assess two main...

This paper focuses on debt maturity of nonpublic Italian firms of small and medium size by international standards and that mainly use bank loans as source of external financing. Compared to few similar studies, the main contributions are that panel estimations allow to control for unobserved...

In the absence of correlation between net wealth and entrepreneurial talent or risk aversion, net wealth should have an explanatory power in the decision of becoming entrepreneurs only for households that are financially constrained. Further, the importance of net wealth should be higher for the...