Skip Navigation


Review of Finance Advance Access originally published online on April 24, 2008
Review of Finance 2009 13(2):261-307; doi:10.1093/rof/rfn010
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
13/2/261    most recent
rfn010v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Alessandrini, P.
Right arrow Articles by Zazzaro, A.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the European Finance Association. All right reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Banks, Distances and Firms' Financing Constraints

Pietro Alessandrini1, Andrea F. Presbitero2 and Alberto Zazzaro3

1 Università Politecnica delle Marche and MoFiR
2 Università Politecnica delle Marche, MoFiR and CeMaFiR
3 Università Politecnica delle Marche, MoFiR and CFESPR

Bank deregulation and progress in information technology altered the geographical diffusion of banking structures and instruments, and reduced operational distance between banks and local economies. Although, the consolidation of the banking industry promoted the geographical concentration of banking decision-making centres and increased functional distance between local banking systems and local borrowers. This paper focuses on the impact that these spatial diffusion-concentration phenomena had on the financing constraints of Italian firms over the period 1996–2003. Our findings show that greater functional distance stiffened financing constraints, especially for small firms, while smaller operational distance did not always enhance credit availability.

JEL Classification: G21, G34, R51.

The paper benefited from comments made by participants at the conference on The Changing Geography of Banking (Ancona, September 2006), the XV International Tor Vergata Conference on Banking and Finance (Rome, December 2006), the 3rd Workshop on Economic Policy and Open Economy Macro (Milan, April 2007), the 43rd Conference on Bank Structure and Competition (Chicago, May 2007) and at seminars at the University of Bari, University of Naples Federico II, Università Politecnica delle Marche, University of Rome III and CFESPR (Portici). In particular, we wish to thank Arnoud Boot, Roberto de Bonis, Alfredo Del Monte, Valter Di Giacinto, Michele Fratianni, Adriano Giannola, Tullio Jappelli, Riccardo Lucchetti, Zeno Rotondi, Greg Udell, Francesco Venturini and two anonymous referees for helpful suggestions. We thank Antonio Riti (Capitalia) and Luigi Guiso for kindly providing us with Surveys on Italian Manufacturing Firms and data on blood donation in Italian provinces respectively.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.