L'industria italiana di fronte alla crisi e al giudizio delle banche

Italian manufacturing through the crisis and credit selection - The heritage of the most striking financial crisis developed from within industrialized countries in recent years will have an impact on industrial companies for many months to come. In addition, the real effect of the crisis and its possible solutions are not yet entirely clear both in terms of magnitude and duration. The "benign" (and procyclical) spillover effects from the financial to the real sectors of the economy are about to change, moving from an open-handed, cheap, general credit, as experienced in the past ten years, to a more one-by-one, pricey, selective approach. The question of the selection and allocative function of banks is crucial to sustain a short-term recovery while ensuring a long-term feasible and sustainable development. In this framework, understanding how resilient and competitive Italian firms are is pivotal to ensure allocative efficiency. The authors suggest that during the last decade conventional wisdom and hard data have often underestimated the industrial upgrading that has taken place in the country. This is not a negligible detail when called to evaluate and select credit - a scarce resource - which if unproperly allocated may significantly distort the development options of a country?s industries.