SMEs’ behavior under financial constraints: An empirical investigation on the legal environment and the substitution effect with tax arrears

Falavigna, Greta; Ippoliti, Roberto

doi:10.1016/j.najef.2023.101903

Cited by 14 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 91 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Of particular interest in our study is that Italy represents a compelling case where firms are negatively affected by poor enforcement of existing regulations and excessive judicial delays 30 . These features could weaken firms' incentive to undertake investments 31 both in general and in OSH specifically. In this sense, carrot policies (i.e., direct and indirect public aid schemes) to support OSH investment—by providing direct financial subsidies to SMEs for tangible and intangible OSH investments—could reduce the risk of underinvestment in OSH and allow for an improvement in firms' economic performance.…”

Section: Evaluation Design Strategy Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Causal impact evaluation of occupational safety policies on firms’ default using machine learning uplift modelling

Barile,

Forti,

Marrocco

et al. 2024

Sci Rep

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

It is often undermined that occupational safety policies do not only displace a direct effect on work well-being, but also an indirect effect on firms’ economic performances. In such context, econometric models dominated the scenes of causality until recently while Machine Learning models were seen with skepticism. With the rise of complex datasets, an ever-increasing need for automated algorithms capable to handle complex non-linear relationships between variables has brought to uncover the power of Machine Learning for causality. In this paper, we carry out an evaluation of a public aid-scheme implemented in Italy and oriented to support investment of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in occupational safety and health (OSH) for assessing the impact on the survival of corporations. A comparison of thirteen models is performed and the Individual Treatment Effect (ITE) estimated and validated based on the AUUC and Qini score for which best values of 0.064 and 0.407, respectively, are obtained based on the Light Gradient Boosting Machine (LightGBM). An additional in-depth statistical analysis also revealed that the best beneficiaries of the policy intervention are those firms that experience performance issues in the period just before the interventions and for which the increased liquidity brought by the policy may have prevented default.

show abstract

Section: Evaluation Design Strategy Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Causal impact evaluation of occupational safety policies on firms’ default using machine learning uplift modelling

Barile,

Forti,

Marrocco

et al. 2024

Sci Rep

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…If we focus on the enforcement of credit rights, judicial inefficiency limits firms' access to the capital market (Chemin, 2012; Djankov et al, 2008), reducing loan size and its maturity, and increasing loan spreads (Mathur & Marcelin, 2015; Ponticelli & Alencar, 2016; Shvets, 2013), and shaping their corporate strategy (Dissanaike et al, 2020; Falavigna & Ippoliti, 2022c; Shah et al, 2017). For instance, considering the Italian manufacturing industry and the legal environment where firms are located, Falavigna and Ippoliti (2023) suggest that by decreasing the judicial delay in enforcing credit rights by 20%, policy makers could trigger an increase in SMEs' access to the capital market between 1.07% and 3.87%, and would lead to a decrease in tax arrears ranging between 0.78% and 1.61%. Accordingly, the judicial system and its functioning are extremely relevant, both to maintain order in the society and to regulate the disputes among private citizens, as well as to support the economic actors on market and to foster their growth.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Data envelopment analysis to investigate the Italian legal system and its reform

Falavigna

Ippoliti

2023

Journal of Public Affairs

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This work investigates the Italian judicial system and discusses the designing of a policy reform to boost the efficiency of courts, considering the human resources available as well as the expenditure generated by the process to deliver justice. The authors present the benchmarks and shed light on how policy makers embarking on such a process of reform may be misled by inappropriate model definition. In detail, the authors propose a comparative analysis of technical efficiency (TE) scores computed using data envelopment analysis, adopting the same output (number of settled cases) and two alternative sets of inputs (judicial expenditure and human resources). According to the results, without considering the information extracted from the two complementary benchmark analyses, policy makers might be misled in the reform process. Regarding the elements that affect the performance of courts, it may be possible to improve the efficiency of judicial districts by working on judicial procedures. Hence, these are the domains where interventions by policy makers may prove successful. As for policy implications, the models and benchmarks presented here could be used to devise a reform of the judicial system aimed at enhancing its TE, while also keeping public expenditure under control.

show abstract

“…In addition to the above-mentioned broad dimensions, context indicators should be involved in assessing the judicial system (Melcarne et al 2021). Falavigna and Ippoliti (2023) investigated the key role of judicial efficiency in enforcing credit rights and the firm's behaviour in accessing external financial resources. These authors noted that, in Italy, the judicial delays led firms to resort to alternative strategies (such as tax arrears) to deal with financial constraints, that means a relevant issue considering that Italy presents an extremely high percentage of micro firms with limited access to the capital market due to their size.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…An efficiency evaluation model cannot ignore the characteristics of labour input, and Bełdowski et al (2020), Banasik et al (2022), and Gupta and Bolia (2024) examined several features connected to the determinants of judges, the court support staff and their productivity. As for the Italian scenario, Falavigna and Ippoliti (2023) and Giacalone et al (2020) emphasised the significant heterogeneity characterising the courts distributed across the territory. Different further proposals have been suggested in the court's efficiency analysis literature.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Efficiency analysis using SBM and PLS-SEM: insights from the Italian judicial system

Mazzocchi,

Quintano,

Rocca

2024

Qual Quant

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Recent governmental concerns regarding the persistent long duration of judicial proceedings have drawn attention to efficiency issues in this sector. This paper provides insights into the Italian scenario, investigating potential relationships between Italian judicial efficiency and several latent constructs identified as relatively more significant than others. For this purpose, a two-step procedure was used, considering data envelopment analysis (DEA), precisely the slacks-based measure (SBM), and partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Beyond ranking courts according to their technical efficiency, findings reveal that judicial efficiency has significant relationships with performance, quality and context features. At the same time, results do not show evidence to support a relationship with proceeding features. What emerges from the work is that the analysis of heterogeneity seems to offer relevant evaluation leverage, and significant differences appear among Italian courts. These insights and the model provided would represent a useful analysis tool for specific policy assessments, supporting the evaluation of regulatory measures and structural reforms relevant to judicial administration.

show abstract

SMEs’ behavior under financial constraints: An empirical investigation on the legal environment and the substitution effect with tax arrears

Cited by 14 publications

References 91 publications

Causal impact evaluation of occupational safety policies on firms’ default using machine learning uplift modelling

Causal impact evaluation of occupational safety policies on firms’ default using machine learning uplift modelling

Data envelopment analysis to investigate the Italian legal system and its reform

Efficiency analysis using SBM and PLS-SEM: insights from the Italian judicial system

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About