Bank Competition, Lending Relationships and Firm Default Risk : An Investigation of Italian SMEs

Building on the literature relating to bank market structure and on the research analysing costs and benefits of concentrated credit relationships, this article aims to empirically assess whether, and to what extent, local credit market concentration impacts on SME default riskiness – making this impact conditional on the closeness of lending relationships. Controlling for inertia, unobserved heterogeneity and endogeneity, we find that bank market concentration positively and significantly affects SME default riskiness when these firms borrow heavily from their main bank and have few credit relationships with other intermediaries. Furthermore, according to our evidence, the influence of credit market concentration on firm default probability is greater as the duration of (close) credit relationships lengthens.Peer reviewe

A single-ion trap with minimized ion–environment interactions

We present a new single-ion endcap trap for high-precision spectroscopy that has been designed to minimize ion–environment interactions. We describe the design in detail and then characterize the working trap using a single trapped (Formula presented.) ion. Excess micromotion has been eliminated to the resolution of the detection method, and the trap exhibits an anomalous phonon heating rate of (Formula presented.). The thermal properties of the trap structure have also been measured with an effective temperature rise at the ion’s position of (Formula presented.). The small perturbations to the ion caused by this trap make it suitable to be used for an optical frequency standard with fractional uncertainties below the (Formula presented.) level.</p