Business investment during the global crisis: some evidence from the Italian experience

The paper investigates investment decisions by using a new source of data, that is the OBI annual survey on firms. The main focus of our analysis mainly is the influence of credit market conditions on investment decisions and we find that the main obstacle to the investment is the level of guarantees that bank demand to grant loans. This element was a constant among all our results, it is relevant for realized investment and for planned ones. All these elements suggest without doubt that the requested guarantees is the most important obstacle in the relationship between firms and banks. An exception to this situation is represented by investments in innovation: guarantees and other elements related to the credit market have no influence on investment decisions suggesting that if the investment project aims at an improvement of firms’ productivity, banks are less hesitant to grant the necessary funding. About economic situation, we found that investments are mainly connected to economic cycle and only a small number of firms invest in order to contrast present economic difficulties. Other interesting results were found for external factors: while for firms the proximity of efficient financial and R&D structures is always important, the tax system plays a role only on future and not defined programs. For firms that have already decided to invest, the proximity of factors that can give them an adequate financial and technical support is more important.