For bad debts, since 1997 the distribution of the borrowers among different classes is determined
on the basis of the global amounts for which each borrower has overdue payments.
For what concerns loan credit commitments, since 1997 they have no longer been distributed (in
the survey form the Bank of Italy) by class size of the credit lines. For this reason, since 1997 the only
observation available from the Bank of Italy was the total credit to all of the borrowers, and this specific
variable could not be used for the estimates. Therefore the data employed in the econometric analyses are
only based on the loan cash credits.
The geographic areas (see tables below) refer to the localization of the local agency of the bank
reporting the data to the statistical survey.
The distribution by size classes for banks (see tables below) has been updated in 1995 and also
includes the former “long term credit special institutions” and “special credit sections” (see "Supplementi
al Bollettino Statistico" , Banca d’Italia, Anno V Numero 32 - 16 June 1995). For the previous periods
the size classification only concerned ordinary banks, which broadly correspond to the present “banks
with short run deposits”.
We report below a few tables summarizing all the criteria of the statistical surveys form the Bank
of Italy and all the definitions concerning the size classes and geographic areas.
Because of the discontinuities of the definitions in the Bank of Italy dataset, the Bank of Italy size
classes “1” and “2” have been aggregated into the size class “c1” for the analyses performed here. This
means that the corresponding interest rate is the weighted average of the interest rates of the two
corresponding classes. A similar aggregation has been done for the bank deposits and the corresponding
interest rates, which, in any case, turned out to be always non significant in preliminary econometric
analyses referred to the interest rate on bank credit and to the overdrafts granted to the largest size class of
customers. Furthermore, since the interest rate on deposits are (in Italy) very stable and show very little
variability, they have not been the object of specific descriptive analyses.
|
Size classes |
Description of the size |
Observed variable |
Definition for the | ||
|
1 |
Less than 80 million lira |
outstanding |
amount |
of |
c1 (in our tables the class c1 |
|
2 |
From 80 to 250 millions |
outstanding |
amount |
of |
c1 (in our tables the class c1 |
|
3 |
From 250 to 500 million |
outstanding |
amount |
of |
c3 |
|
4 |
From 500 million lira to 1 |
outstanding |
amount |
of |
c4 |
|
5 |
over 1 billion |
outstanding |
amount |
of |
c5 |
29