This paper tests the impact of firms’ ownership structure on firms’ innovation decisions using a rich dataset of about 20,000 Italian manufacturers. After accounting for its possible endogeneity, we find that ownership concentration negatively affects the probability of innovation,...

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Using a rich sample of small and medium-sized European firms, we study how banks' lending technologies affected firms' export activities during the 2009 great trade collapse. We find that bank-firm relationships mitigated the contraction of firms' export by easing banks' access to inside, "soft"...

Using rich data from the Italian local credit markets (provinces), this paper investigates the impact of local banking development on income inequality and the role of the socioeconomic structure in this link. Exploiting the Italian historical banking regulation to instrument for the local...