The Banks And The Italian Economy

Damiano Bruno Silipo In the 1990s the Italian banking system underwent profound normative, institutional and structural changes. The Consolidated Law on Banking (1993) and that on Finance (1998) instituted the legal framework for a far-reaching overhaul of the Italian banking and ?nancial system: signi?cant relaxation of entry barriers, the liberalization of branching, the privatization of the Italian banks, and a massive process of mergers and acquisitions. Following the Bank of Italy’s liberalization of branching in 1990, in 10 years the number of bank branches increased by 70% in Italy, while in the rest of Europe it declined. Over the decade the average number of banks doing business in a province rose from 27 to 31, while a wave of mergers (324 operations) and acquisitions (137) revolutionized the Italian banking industry, reducing the overall number of Italian banks by 30%. To a signi?cant extent this concentration represented take-overs of troubled Southern banks by Central and Northern ones. As a result of these developments (plus a rise in banking productivity and a fall in costs), the spread between short-term lending and deposit rates fell from 7 percentage points in 1990 to 4 points in 1999. And despite an increase in concentration in a number of local credit markets, the interest-rate differential between the locally dominant and other banks generally narrowed.

This book looks at the banking and finance industries in Italy and how these industries contribute to the Italian economy. Could these industries be the solution to the contradiction in which the country's economy has been caught for several years: it is better governed than it has been in the past, but is not growing as much as it could. The book looks at how this solution might be achieved and what factors will govern the contribution of the banking and finance industries.

This title was first published in 2003. Most of the essays collected in this volume are the revised versions of the reports presented at a conference held at the University of Tokyo in October 2001, organised as part of the initiatives of the "Italian Year" in Japan, and supported by the Foundation Italy in Japan 2001, the Italian Chamber of Commerce in Tokyo, the Italian Ministries of Foreign Affairs and of Higher Education, and the University of Tokyo. The essays, which aim at a fact-based presentation, provide a thorough survey of the relevant problems and aspects of present-day Italian economy and society. Those peculiar features of the Italian economy, such as its dualistic industrial structure and territorial divide, are analysed at length, with an eye to open policy options. The economic analyses are complemented by presentations of some of the central topics on the Italian social framework, such as the role of family and the "Third Sector".

Carlo Bastasin and Gianni Toniolo provide a much-needed, up-to-date economic history of Italy from unification in 1861 to the present day. They show how, thirty years after unification, Italy began a long phase of convergence with more advanced economies so that by the late twentieth century Italy's per capita income reached the levels of Germany, France and the UK. From the mid-1990s, however, the Italian economy declined first in relative and then absolute terms. The authors describe the intertwined financial and institutional crises that eroded trust in the political system and in the economy at the exact juncture when new technologies and markets transformed the global economy. Longstanding problems of uneven levels of education and obsolete bureaucratic and judicial practices deepened the division between economically vibrant regions and the rest, causing polarization, political instability and rising public debt. Italy's contemporary malaise makes the country a test-case for understanding the implications of protracted declines in productivity and the flattening of GDP growth for the stability of western democracies, resulting in populism, mistrust and political instability.

A brief, up-to-date account of Italy's transformation from an agrarian state to an industrial powerhouse.