The paper investigates the extent to which Italian corporate default correlation is due to the common dependence on macroeconomic (systematic) risk factors or, else, to other possibly unobservable factors arising from business inter-connections. Data on corporate default frequencies are taken...

This paper shows the results of a survey on firms regarding the changes that are occurring in the bank-firm relationship in view of Basel II. The survey has been conducted on an national basis together with a local one directed to small firms localized in the regions of Emilia-Romagna, Puglia...