The study analyses trends in the market for consumer credit during the crisis, relying on data by CRIF referring to demand for personal and special-purpose loans and to contracts signed between 2007 and 2013 in Italy (55 and 37 million respectively). The analysis shows how the sharp reduction in...

Half a decade of crisis has had a substantial impact on the market for credit to Italian households. From 2008 through 2012 the share of indebted households decreased by 4 percentage points, to 23 per cent; among young households it fell by 12 points. The decline involved consumer credit and...

Small firms encounter difficulties in collecting external finance due to greater information problems. For small innovative firms, whose activity is more difficult to evaluate, the cost of external finance could be even higher. This paper aims to shed light on special features in financial...

A number of empirical works analyzed the effect of agglomeration on multinational investment verifying whether agglomerated areas attract foreign direct investment. Despite the large amount of studies, there has been no systematic attempts to disentangle whether FDI are drawn by the...

In this paper we estimate the long-run relationship between total factor productivity, R&D capital stock and human capital in the Italian regions between 1980 and 2001. We exploit recent developments of panel cointegration techniques to estimate the cointegration relationship, allowing for...

Since the second half of the '90s, investment incentives channelled through the Law 488 have represented the main policy instrument for reducing territorial disparities in Italy. From 1996 to 2003, the total amount of funds distributed to industrial firms has accounted for 16 billion of euro,...

This paper contributes to the literature on the effectiveness of R&D incentives by evaluating a unique investment subsidy program implemented in northern Italy. Firms were invited to submit proposals for new projects and only those that scored above a certain threshold received the subsidy. We...