Pakistan undertook major financial sector reforms starting in the late 1980s. The effects of these reforms on the profitability and cost and revenue efficiency of the banking sector are evaluated. The revenue performance of all banks, and especially the privatized banks, improved significantly,...

This paper investigates the empirical relationship between competition in the financial sector and the creation of firms in the non-financial sector. It finds that bank competition has an overall positive effect on firm creation. However, consistent with theories of banking arguing that...

Nel 2015 i prestiti bancari sono cresciuti per le imprese di maggiore dimensione mentre hanno continuato a contrarsi per quelle più piccole; questo divario si osserva anche per le aziende appartenenti allo stesso settore di attività economica o con condizioni di bilancio simili. Stime...

We analyse the financing sources of over 360,000 Italian start-ups registered between 2003 and 2010. The data show that, before the Global Financial Crisis, 50 per cent of start-ups borrowed from banks when they were one year old, and that bank loans covered 16 per cent of total assets on...

The two recessions that have hit Italy since the end of 2008 have raised the share of non-performing loans to businesses in banks' portfolios substantially. In this paper we evaluate to what extent the deterioration of credit quality was due not only to the decline in firms' sales during the...

We analyze the fate of 120 Italian banks that experienced abrupt drops in profitability. About 1/3 see their profits recover. These banks were lending to riskier clients than the average in the overall economy prior to their distress. Whether they recover depends on the size of the initial...

We empirically investigate the relevance of demand-side complementarity between electronic and traditional provision of banking services. Since no systematic data on prices for the two types of service is available, it is not possible to estimate cross-elasticities of demand. We resort to two...

This paper provides new estimates of cost scale economies for Italian banks, based on a model of bank production that takes into account a comprehensive definition of output including different categories of loans, deposits, off-balance sheet items, payment services, and brokerage and asset...