The private investment response to structural reforms in developing countries is of paramount importance, both for the future economic growth and the survival of the reforms themselves. By employing a sample of countries, recipients of World Bank Structural Adjustment Loans, the present paper...

This work investigates whether World Bank loans fostering trade liberalization are associated with less distorted export policies, by employing some gravity model-based measures of anti-export bias, and a Herfindhal index of export revenues concentration. When accounting for non-random selection...

This paper investigates the role of institutional differences at the local level as determinants of firms’ capital structure. Specifically, its aim is to empirically assess whether and to what extent SMEs’ financial decisions are affected by local financial development – evaluating this...

The paper explores the motivations underlying the securitization activity of Italian banks from 1999 to 2006. By estimating probit and proportional hazard duration models, in which the probability of placing securitizations is linked to a set of balance sheet indicators and a vector of further...

The hypothesis that ownership structure affects persistence of profits in the Italian banking industry is tested. The time-invariant components of ROA and ROE are regressed against ownership concentration and the fraction of shares held by the major shareholders. The results show that abnormal...

Adopting a gravity framework and using data from 1995 to 2009 for France, Italy and Spain, we investigate whether the designation of the production area has a positive pay-off in terms of greater export values, volumes and presence in different export markets. We find that quality wines produced...

Based on a large panel of Italian SMEs, this paper focuses on the relationship between firms' default probability and the amount of bank debt they obtain, evaluating whether and to what extent this link is affected by the degree of competition characterizing the local credit market where firms...