Abstract

The years before financial crisis (1989-2007) were characterized by transformations of rules and a restructuring process of the Italian banking system. The aim of this paper is to verify if these changes favoured the process of convergence among Italian regions in terms of income, savings and investments, according to the methodology used by Valverde et al. (2007) and the dynamic GMM estimator introduced by Arellano and Bond (1991). The results show that processes of convergence are not significantly determined by financial variables. Regional gaps are linked exclusively to real variables, whereas financial variables have contributed over time to amplify such gaps. In particular, these results highlight that unifications and takeovers of lending institution in Central and Southern area by Northern banks have favoured further credit rationing for the agents living in Southern regions, thus worsening their relative position.