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For every municipality I c i with no housing insured (it happens for some small municipalities), we replace HT ht with HT ht , computed over all the HT ht insured housing units of the province I c i SB I P i sb to which municipality I c i belongs. For municipality I c i , if I N i SB I c i sb is the total number of housing units, an estimate I v i SB I c i sb of the housing stock's value is: HT ht Graph where I k i is a scaling factor to obtain HT ht billion euros. [Extracted from the article]

We examine two sources of bias for the Bank of Italy's panel business survey of Industrial and Services Firms: 1) the bias caused by panel attrition; and 2) the bias created by delays in the distributional data on the reference population, needed for computing the survey weights. As for the first source of bias, the estimates strongly dependent on big firms' values are less affected by panel attrition than those representing firms' average behavior, independent of their sizes. Positive economic results make it easier to enroll new firms in the survey, in order to replace firms dropping out because of bad economic performances. However, the economic results of new entrances become more aligned to those of the population, once they enter the sample. A very different result emerges for the second source of bias, since, when the population size is highly variable, the information delays produce a bias for the estimates influenced by the contribution of great firms, but the effect is negligible for the estimates not dependent on firm size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an exploratory agent-based model of a real time gross settlement (RTGS) payment system. Banks are represented as agents who exchange payment requests, which are then settled according to a set of simple rules. The model features the main elements of a real-life system, including a central bank acting as liquidity provider, and a simplified money market. A simulation exercise using synthetic data of BI-REL (the Italian RTGS) predicts the macroscopic impact of a disruptive event on the flow of interbank payments. In our reduced-scale system, three hypothetical distinct phases emerge after the disruptive event: 1) a liquidity sink effect is generated and the participants' liquidity expectations turn out to be excessive; 2) an illusory thickening of the money market follows, along with increased payment delays; and, finally 3) defaulted obligations dramatically rise. The banks cannot staunch the losses accruing on defaults, even after they become fully aware of the critical event, and a scenario emerges in which it might be necessary for the central bank to step in as liquidity provider. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to examine the importance of shareholder identity in improving company performance during shock events such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The outbreak poses threats and opportunities for businesses in various countries including Indonesia. Subsequently, companies must adapt to address the consequences of the economic disruption and lockdown policies imposed by the local government. The study sample comprised companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) during the COVID-19 pandemic from 2020 to 2021. Fixed effects model regression was employed to examine the effect of family, government, and institutional ownership on company performance. The results showed that family and institutional ownership positively affected company performance during the pandemic. The mechanisms of direct supervision and control by family members could potentially increase the benefits of their businesses. Furthermore, high institutional ownership makes the role of investors substantial in reducing business risk and increasing company performance. Furthermore, the results revealed that government ownership negatively affected company performance. As owners, the government has different strategic objectives, where companies are more oriented toward better public services than financial gains. Therefore, it is essential to consider the impact of shareholder involvement on company performance, especially during a pandemic because they are treated differently. The research suggests that organizations are responding and adapting to the uncertainties in the business environment they face through a variety of mechanisms, including developing public and corporate governance strategies to prepare for and respond to future emergencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors study compensation packages in family-owned and nonfamily-owned firms. Using French matched employer-employee data, they first show that family firms pay on average lower wages. Part of this wage gap is attributable to low-wage workers sorting into family firms and high-wage workers sorting into nonfamily firms; however, they also find evidence that company wage policies differ according to ownership status, so that the same worker is paid differently under family and nonfamily firm ownership. In addition, family firms are characterized by lower job insecurity, as measured by lower dismissal rates. Family firms also appear to rely less on dismissals, and more on hiring reductions, than do nonfamily firms when they downsize. The authors show that compensating wage differentials account for a substantial part of the inverse relationship between the family/nonfamily gaps in wages and job security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A sudden and temporary change to the Italian property tax system in 2011 generated significant variation in the amount of taxes paid across home-owners. Using new questions appositely added to the Survey on Household Income and Wealth, we exploit this cross-sectional variation to provide an unprecedented analysis of the consumption effects of a tax on housing wealth. A tax hike on the main dwelling leads to large expenditure cuts among mortgagors, who hold low liquid wealth despite owning sizable illiquid assets. In contrast, higher tax rates on other residential properties affect affluent households, thereby having a modest impact on their consumer spending. Our results provide novel and direct evidence in favor of recent theories that highlight the role of household debt in the transmission of economic policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the impact of local social pressure on firms' firing decisions. Using linked employer-employee data, we show that secondary establishments located further away from headquarters have higher dismissal rates than those located closer. The effect of distance on dismissals is stronger, the greater the visibility of the firm in the local community of its headquarters and the larger the degree of selfishness of that community. We show that these findings can be explained by the social pressure exerted by the communities where firms' headquarters are located, which induces CEOs to refrain from dismissing at short distance from their headquarters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A list of editorial collaborators is presented including Owen Abbott, Lazarus Adua, and Ana Aizcorbe.

In China, SMEs are facing financing difficulties, and commercial banks and financial institutions are the main financing channels for SMEs. Thus, a reasonable and efficient credit risk assessment system is important for credit markets. Based on traditional statistical methods and AI technology, a soft voting fusion model, which incorporates logistic regression, support vector machine (SVM), random forest (RF), eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost), and Light Gradient Boosting Machine (LightGBM), is constructed to improve the predictive accuracy of SMEs' credit risk. To verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed model, we use data from 123 SMEs nationwide that worked with a Chinese bank from 2016 to 2020, including financial information and default records. The results show that the accuracy of the soft voting fusion model is higher than that of a single machine learning (ML) algorithm, which provides a theoretical basis for the government to control credit risk in the future and offers important references for banks to make credit decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]