Abstract

The crucial role that bank's capital plays in the regulation model, and the rapid privatization process which has characterized the Italian credit market, bring inevitably to eliminate banks relatively undercapitalized. In the Italian case, these banks were Southern banks, acting in a highly risky enviroment. More than the alleged gap of efficiency, undercapitalization and two asymmetric shocks that heavily affected the Mezzogiorno economy in 1992 (the sharp de evaluation of the lira and the end of the "intervento straordinario") are at the very origin of the sudden collapse of the Southern banking system. More than 15 years later, such a consolidation and concentration of the banking sector have not produced a real convergence in the access to credit for Southern small firms. In a regime of monetary union national authorities have to face the problem of persisting structural unbalances in credit market as one of the main features of the Italian economic dualism.