This paper investigates the role of microeconomic and macroeconomic factors on Italian bank risk taking, paying particular attention on the differences between cooperative and non-cooperative banks. The non-performing loan ratio is used as dimension of bank risk taking. The data refer to a large sample of financial institutions covering the 2001−2014 period. We then assess whether the impact of microeconomic and macroeconomic factors is shaped by the market structure and investigate the effects of the 2008 financial crisis on banks’ risk taking. Our empirical findings have several of policy implications and can be summarised as follows: i) capitalisation, volume of credits, volume of costs and intermediation costs are the key microeconomic factors explaining credit quality; b) among the main macroeconomic factors, branch density, deposit density and specialisation have a significant effect on the variable of interest; c) the financial crisis determined an increase in banks’ credit rationing. Our results suggest that regulators, in changing banks’ incentives, can be effective in improving the quality of credits, therefore enhancing the stability of the financial system. Capital requirements, often considered as a proxy that captures the effects of Basel agreements, have been found to increase credit quality.

本文研究了微观经济和宏观经济因素对意大利银行风险承担的作用，并特别关注合作银行和非合作银行之间的差异。不良贷款率用作银行风险承担的维度。数据涉及涵盖2001-2014年期间的大量金融机构样本。然后，我们评估微观经济和宏观经济因素的影响是否受市场结构影响，并调查2008年金融危机对银行风险承担的影响。我们的实证研究结果具有若干政策含义，可以概括如下：i）资本化，信贷量，成本量和中介成本是解释信贷质量的关键微观经济因素；b）在主要的宏观经济因素中，分支密度，矿床密度和专业化对感兴趣的变量有重要影响；c）金融危机决定了银行信贷配给的增加。我们的结果表明，监管机构通过改变银行的激励措施，可以有效地改善信贷质量，从而增强金融体系的稳定性。人们发现，通常被认为是捕捉巴塞尔协议效果的替代品的资本要求可以提高信贷质量。