Publications
The wheel of life: The effect of the abolition of the foundling wheel in 19th-century Italy. With Giuliana Freschi (Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa) Explorations in Economic History
This paper examines the effects of abolishing the ruota (foundling wheel) system on reproductive decision-making in post-unitary Italy (1863-1882). Baby hatches offered a means for anonymous infant abandonment, often used in Catholic Europe due to social stigma and poverty. As infant abandonment rates and foundling mortality soared in the XIX century, countries began dismantling these systems. Italy mirrored this trend, with provinces abolishing the ruota at different times. We investigate the specific impacts of the ruota abolition on infant abandonment, infant mortality, births, and gender discrimination. To do so, we use a novel longitudinal dataset of Italian provinces and a staggered Difference-in-Difference empirical design. Our findings show a 54.9% decrease in abandonment, a 10.4% decline in infant deaths, and a 4% drop in births after the ruota was abolished. This suggests a significant shift in reproductive behavior and family planning in response to policy change. This research offers historical insights into XIX-century Italy’s social and economic dynamics surrounding child abandonment. It also contributes to the economic understanding of fertility decisions, demographic transitions, and societal responses to poverty.
Foreign banks and the London money market during the first globalization. With Wilfried Kisling (WU Vienna). Cliometrica.
This study examines the relationship between the London Money Market (LMM) and the credit provision of non-British overseas banks during the first wave of globalization. Using monthly data between 1889 and 1913, we find a positive relationship between the amount of credit authorized by the German Brasilianische Bank für Deutschland in Brazil and the spread between the London market and floating rate. Our results suggest that an increase in demand for foreign bills and/or a decrease in borrowing costs in the LMM leads to an increase in credit supply. We use the impact of annual tax payments on the spread between market and floating rate as an instrumental variable (IV) to show that this relationship is causal. Although there is a significant amount of literature on London's historic role as a global financial centre and a growing number of studies on foreign banking history, little quantitative evidence is available about the connection between the two. This study bridges this gap.
Competition, over-branching, and bank failures during the Great Depression: new evidence from Italy. Economic History Review. (earlier version Quaderni di Storia Economica della Banca d'Italia)
This paper examines the link between overbranching and financial distress during the interwar period in Europe, focusing on Italy as a case study. Using regression analysis and a systematic review of coeval literature, it shows that banks experiencing distress had opened scores of branches, had higher expenses, engaged in riskier activities, and operated in areas with harsher competition. The 1920s in Italy saw a profound transformation of the banking system, with extensive branch expansion and cut-throat competition for deposits. This paper argues that this structural change made it more fragile when the international crisis hit, and available evidence on other European countries suggest that Italy was not an isolated case. The study contributes to the literature on banking crises during the Great Depression, and to that on the effects of banking competition on financial stability.
Credit expansion, leverage, and banking distress: the puzzle of interwar Italy. European Review of Economic History
At the macro level, recent policy-relevant research establishes an association between credit booms and banking distress; the focus is on leverage. However, scant evidence is available at the micro level. This study analyses the relationship between lending growth, leverage, and distress at the individual bank level for interwar Italy, which experienced remarkable credit expansion in the 1920s. Novel data from archival research based on classified documents of banking supervision reveals a large, albeit forgotten, crisis. An interesting puzzle emerges: regression analysis on bank balance sheets indicates that leverage and lending growth are not good predictors of distress at the individual bank level. A broad set of economic indicators shows that the features highlighted in the existing literature on leveraged credit booms do not apply to Italy. Italy’s interwar credit expansion was not a credit boom based on leverage, but rather a process of financial development
The distress of Italian commercial banks in 1926-1936: a new dataset from supervision archives. Annals of the Fondazione Luigi Einaudi. (WP expanded version)
This paper documents a new dataset on the distress of Italian joint-stock banks in 1926-1936. It employs classified information from Italian banking supervision archives to identify outright and hidden bank failures. Providing the first all-embracing account of the crisis of small and medium banks in Italy during the Great Depression, it shows that once hidden distress is considered, their crisis was more severe than previously thought. Measured by total assets of banks involved, the distress of joint-stock banks would be considered a ‘systemic crisis’ by today standards. While previous research has mainly focused on the distress of large universal banks, this research opens new questions on our interpretation of the impact of bank distress in interwar Italy.
The establishment of banking supervision in Italy: an assessment (1926–1936). With Dario Pellegrino (Bank of Italy). Business History
This paper describes the establishment of banking supervision in Italy and its operation between 1926 and 1936, using a narrative approach based on previously classified documents from the Bank of Italy’s Historical Archives. This case is particularly interesting from the international perspective, Italy having been the first European country to assign substantial supervision to its central bank, a few years before the 1929 crisis. Notwithstanding insufficient regulation and a light touch concerning the four major mixed banks, we document considerable enforcement of the law, which went beyond the initial provisions, thanks to the rather proactive supervisory approach adopted by the Bank of Italy.
Lessons from the early establishment of banking supervision in Italy (1926-1936). With Dario Pellegrino (Bank of Italy). Quaderni di Storia Economica della Banca d'Italia
In this paper, we describe the establishment and assess the relevance of banking supervision in Italy between 1926 and 1936. This case is particularly interesting from the international perspective, Italy having been the first European country to assign substantial supervision to its central bank, a few years before the 1929 crisis. Notwithstanding insufficient regulation and a light touch concerning the four major mixed banks, we document considerable enforcement of the law, which went beyond the initial provisions, thanks to the rather proactive supervisory approach adopted by the Bank of Italy. We point out a significant impact on the banking system: systematic archival analysis reveals that supervision fostered capital accumulation and mitigated lending concentration. Preliminary evidence suggests that supervision information enhanced effective lending of last resort during the crisis. Our educated guess is that, in the absence of the new supervisory set-up, the severity of the financial turmoil in the early 1930s in Italy would have been much fiercer, especially for small and medium-sized banks.
Measuring bank failures in interwar Italy: sources and methods for a comparative account. Rivista di Storia Economica
This paper gives a quantitative and geographical description of bank failures in Italy in the interwar period. It builds the first all-embracing account of Italian commercial banks filing for bankruptcy between July 1925 and March 1936. Using both secondary sources and primary documents from the archives of banking supervisors preserved at the Bank of Italy and the Archivio Centrale dello Stato in Rome, I create a dataset that provides future scholars with an accurate reconstruction of the magnitude, timing, and geography of outright bank failures. Using this evidence, I argue that the distress of small and medium banks was not negligible, that Italian bank failures were endemic and widespread throughout the period, and that there are important regional variations. At least in this last respect, this work makes one concrete contribution to the existing literature: it allows the first comparative assessment of regional trends, showing that bank failures in interwar Italy were more severe in the South, backing existing qualitative narratives with hard facts. However, this research only lays a foundation and raises more questions than it answers, spelling out an agenda for future research.
Understanding banking distress and the importance of supervision archives: insights from Fascist Italy. Revue d'économie financière
This short paper summarises (in French) my research on banking distress in interwar Italy. It stresses the importance of using banking supervision archives in economic history. This story emerging from the Bank of Italy’s supervision archives provides insights that can be useful even today. Firstly, it shows that while leverage and credit expansions are considered good predictors of bank distress at the aggregate level, this is not necessarily true at the individual bank level. Secondly, this research flags one relevant caveat for policymakers: one must be careful before interpreting all credit-to-GDP expansions as leveraged credit booms and should contextualise them with a more extensive set of indicators on financial access. Thirdly, financial development processes can still go wrong, possibly through overbanking, even without leverage dynamics. As a final consideration, this research shows that banking supervision archives provide a rich and still largely unexplored resource to study banking distress, complementing existing quantitative studies.
Work in progress:
Bonds or Credits? The inequality of risk and sovereign lending in the Euromarkets: evidence from Mexico 1973-1982. With Sebastian Alvarez (Universidad Adolfo Ibañez) (Submitted)
This paper examines how international banks managed risk leading up to the 1982 sovereign debt crisis, a turning point in post-Bretton Woods financial globalization. Focusing on Mexico, we demonstrate that banks favored credits during stable periods but shifted to syndicate bond issuance during turmoil, offloading risk to the market. Notably, dominant banks reduced their exposure during crises by expanding syndicate size and involving outside participants. Our study challenges the prevailing view that international sovereign bonds were crowded out by syndicated credits in the 1970s and 80s, showing instead that they played a crucial role in bank risk management. We also contribute to the literature by introducing a new dataset on Mexico’s syndicate credits and bonds from 1971-1982 and by integrating macro, micro, and case study analyses to provide a comprehensive understanding of the dynamics at play in sovereign lending.
Fresh perspectives on cross-border banking in the 20th Century: new evidence of Italian correspondent banking. With Catherine Schenk and Giovanni Pala (University of Oxford) (Submitted). Working Paper
The global payments system forms the essential plumbing of globalisation, but it has attracted remarkably little attention from historians or economists and remains an underexplored dimension of bank internationalisation. This paper provides new micro evidence on how the structure of the system evolved in Italy. This is a fresh approach, examining the pattern of thousands of bilateral payment connections between banks in Italy and London over the 20th century at a much more granular level than existing approaches. Moreover, this perspective enhances our understanding of the geography of cross-border economic activity by reaching beyond the national scale of most existing analyses of trade and payments to expose the very local dimension. Thus, the data reveal how smaller banks in towns and cities across Italy were connected to the global payment system to provide services to local migrants, traders, and investors. The data also reveal the variation between regions over time in the intensity of their direct connection to the global payment system. We map the connections and relate them to regional economic activity to demonstrate the potential for further analysis.
Distribution of bank offices in interwar Italy: exogenous or endogenous? New evidence from provincial data (1927-1936). With Michele Calabria (University of Siena) (Submitted)
The Italian banking system underwent significant transformation in the interwar period, with dramatic expansion between WWI's end and the Great Depression's eve, followed by marked consolidation, as per Ciocca and Biscaini Cotula (1982). The 1936 banking law "froze" the system, shaping the post-WWII provincial banking structure. Economists often view this 1936 distribution as exogenous, driven by political will, while Italian banking historians argue for a more nuanced view, acknowledging political influence but also economic and technical factors. However, the lack of pre-1936 provincial data hindered assessment of the 1936 distribution's exogeneity. This paper contributes by reconstructing a novel dataset of province-level economic variables, including bank offices, before the Great Depression, providing the first disaggregated assessment of pre- and post-crisis financial development, and testing the correlation between pre-consolidation (1927/28) and post-consolidation banking structures. OLS regression shows a strong correlation between the log of bank offices per province in 1928 and 1936, and PCA-based regressions demonstrate that pre-Great Depression economic data strongly predict the number of banks in 1928, critically reassessing the 1936 bank distribution's exogeneity.