How does government-backed finance affect SMEs' crisis predictors?

This paper estimates the impact of public guarantees on crisis predictive indicators among small and mid-size enterprises (SMEs). We use a confidential database provided by the Italian Ministry of Economic Development on the universe of guarantees granted by the Central Guarantee Fund. We apply difference-in-difference regressions and propensity-score matching estimators to a sample of approximately 40,000 SMEs over the 2010-2018 period.

Robust portfolio optimization for banking foundations: a CVaR approach for asset allocation with mandatory constraints.

This paper focuses on an innovative asset allocation strategy for risk averse investors who operate on very long-time horizons, such as endowments and the Italian foundations of banking origin (FBOs). FBOs play a pivotal role in supporting economic, financial and sustainable growth in the long term. In the search for a model which optimizes FBO portfolio choices in the light of regulatory constraints on their sizeable investable portfolio, we highlight the risk-adjusted performances obtained using a robust conditional VaR (R-CVaR) approach-assuming different risk profiles-which corrects some of the Markowitz approach pitfalls and accounts for tail risk.