Search results for "Public banks"
showing 2 items of 2 documents
Preserving Financial Stability in Times of Crisis. A Tale of Two Public Banks: Monte dei Paschi di Siena and Banco di Sicilia, 1929-1940
2018
In this paper, we investigate the contrasting business strategies and models adopted by two major Italian public banks in the 1930s. Monte dei Paschi di Siena and Banco di Sicilia are interesting case studies for a number of reasons: their strong regional connections; their prolonged struggle for political independence from the national monetary authorities; their common attempt to modify the scale and scope of their business with the creation of integrated banking groups; and their early internationalization of activities. We examine how the two banks were affected by (and involved in) the major financial and economic crisis of the 1930s and show how external shocks altered their banking s…
Growing Like Germany: Local Public Debt, Local Banks, Low Private Investment
2021
The paper uses a panel of more than 1m German firms over 2010-2016, to provide the first firm-bank level evidence of local crowding out for a developed economy characterized by low interest rates and fiscal austerity. Our mechanism relies on two structural features of Germany's banking landscape: the local segmentation of credit markets for small and medium-sized firms (SME) and the role of local public banks in local public finance. Local public banks dominate lending to small and medium firms in Germany and also have an explicit mandate to lend to the local public sector. With spreads on local government debt at all-time lows, local public banks tried to break even, using their market pow…