Fiduciari and Firm Liquidity Constraints: The Italian Experience with German-Style Universal Banking
Creators
Abstract
This study presents new evidence on the role of bank relationships in attenuating Italian firms' liquidity constraints and interprets the findings in comparison with those from a similar study of the German case. Employing investment models on a panel of 170 firms between 1903 and 1911, the analysis shows that bank relationships had little effect on the liquidity constraints of the general population of investing firms, but that they may have attenuated liquidity constraints for new firms. Analysis of the characteristics associated with bank-attached firms indicates that such firms were significantly different from independent firms, and that German-style banks may, therefore, have been important for ex ante monitoring and signaling to investors. The results for Italy accord well with the German experience, and thus universal banking appears, in general, to have had limited impact on the investment patterns of firms during industrialization.
Additional Information
This paper is a substantially revised version of Chapters 8 and 9 of my dissertation. I am grateful to Lance Davis, Jeff Dubin, Barry Eichengreen, David Grether, John Latting, Richard Meese, David Romer, Richard Tilly, and Gianni Toniolo as well as to workshop participants at Berkeley, Caltech, Illinois, the University of Munster, and Northwestern University and conference participants at the 1996 Congress of the European Association of Historical Economics for helpful discussions and comments on earlier drafts. I am indebted to Francesca Pino-Pongolini and Laura Contini of the Comit Archive for providing important data as well as general guidance in beginning this project. I also thank Teresa Pandolfi of the Bank of Italy archive for providing photocopies of the data source. Financial support from the Joint Committee on Western Europe of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council (with funds provided by the Ford and Mellon Foundations), the Center for German and European Studies at U.C. Published as Fohlin, Caroline. "Fiduciariand Firm Liquidity Constraints: The Italian Experience with German-Style Universal Banking." Explorations in Economic History 35, no. 1 (1998): 83-107.Attached Files
Submitted - sswp948.pdf
Files
sswp948.pdf
Files
(3.8 MB)
| Name | Size | Download all |
|---|---|---|
|
md5:170d426a95799c2a5dcd758d41605cd7
|
3.8 MB | Preview Download |
Additional details
Identifiers
- Eprint ID
- 80574
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20170817-142157556
Related works
- Describes
- http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20170830-111714793 (URL)
Funding
- Social Science Research Council
- American Council of Learned Societies
- Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
- Ford Foundation
Dates
- Created
-
2017-08-21Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2019-10-03Created from EPrint's last_modified field
Caltech Custom Metadata
- Caltech groups
- Social Science Working Papers
- Series Name
- Social Science Working Paper
- Series Volume or Issue Number
- 948