Filippo De Marco Wins the 9th SUERF/UniCredit Foundation Prize

Filippo De Marco won the 9th SUERF/UniCredit Foundation Prize, which was given to two outstanding papers on the topic "Post-COVID non-performing loans: effectiveness and efficiency of government intervention, implications for banks, the role of financial regulation and supervision."

The award-winning paper, entitled "Public Guarantees for Small Businesses in Italy during COVID-19," investigates whether a bank's information technology (IT) capabilities and physical branch presence might affect the supply of government guaranteed credit.

De Marco and the co-author Fabrizio Core (Erasmus University) find that banks with better IT capabilities provide more, cheaper, and faster guaranteed loans. However, bank branch presence is still an important determinant of the overall volume of guaranteed credit. In fact, banks lent more in their core markets and where they have an ex-ante larger market share.

These results are meaningful for policy makers when designing policies that are meant to address firm liquidity shortages during a crisis.

"I am very grateful to SUERF and UniCredit Foundation for this opportunity and for supporting research on such important issues for the current economic outlook," said De Marco.

The 9th SUERF/UniCredit Foundation Research Prize was launched by SUERF (The European Money and Finance Forum) and UniCredit Foundation with the aim to examine the rise in non-performing loans post-COVID-19 crisis.