Suchergebnisse

We study the effects of asymmetric information and imperfect competition in the market for small business lines of credit. We estimate a structural model of credit demand, loan use, pricing, and firm default using matched firm-bank data from Italy. We find evidence of adverse selection in the form of a positive correlation between the unobserved determinants of demand for credit and default. Our counterfactual experiments show that while increases in adverse selection increase prices and defaults on average, reducing credit supply, banks' market power can mitigate these negative effects. (JEL D22, D82, G21, G32, L13, L25)

The paper studies a fiscal policy instrument that can reduce fiscal distortions, without affecting revenues, in a politically viable way. The instrument is a private contract (tax buyout), offered by the government to each individual citizen, whereby the citizen can choose to pay a fixed price up front in exchange for a given reduction in her tax rate for a prespecified period of time. We consider a dynamic overlapping-generations economy, calibrated to match several features of the U.S. income and wealth distribution, and show that, under simple pricing, the introduction of the buyout is revenue neutral and at the same time can benefit a significant fraction of the population and lead to sizable increases in labor supply, income, consumption, and welfare.

Abstract
We investigate the effects of female executives on gender-specific wage distributions and firm performance. Female leadership has a positive impact at the top of the female wage distribution and a negative impact at the bottom. The impact of female leadership on firm performance increases with the share of female workers. We account for the endogeneity induced by non-random executives' gender by including firm fixed-effects, by generating controls from a two-way fixed-effects regression and by using instruments based on regional trends. The findings are consistent with a model of statistical discrimination in which female executives are better at interpreting signals of productivity from female workers. This suggests substantial costs of women under-representation among executives.

We study the potential benefits and mechanisms of firms' political connections by analyzing the Italian experience, where, in the early nineties, Silvio Berlusconi, a rich TV tycoon, became the leader of the conservative political coalition. Using firm-level data, we find that the 101 companies supporting Berlusconi's successful bid to become prime minister did better than controls in terms of sales and employment but not of productivity. The results are confirmed when we instrument the decision to support Berlusconi with electoral outcomes in the 1921 elections. We also find suggestive evidence that the supporters' superior performance is stronger in sectors with high external financial dependence and high advertising intensity.