The paper investigates whether firms have better access to bank credit in territories characterized by a larger degree of urbanization. It uses Italian bank-firm data drawn from the Credit Register to devise an indicator of easiness of access to credit. The paper proposes an instrumental variable strategy that exploits as instruments past population density and urbanization driven by political economy considerations. The results show that urbanization positively affects access to credit for construction firms, whose collateral greatly benefits from thicker real estate markets. No impact is found for service and manufacturing firms.

中文翻译：

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城市化和企业获得信贷

本文调查了在城市化程度较高的地区，企业是否能更好地获得银行信贷。它使用从信用登记册中提取的意大利银行公司数据来设计获得信贷的难易程度的指标。本文提出了一种工具变量策略，该策略利用过去由政治经济因素驱动的人口密度和城市化作为工具。结果表明，城市化对建筑公司获得信贷产生积极影响，建筑公司的抵押品大大受益于更发达的房地产市场。没有发现对服务和制造公司的影响。