No. 251 - Do firm-bank relationships affect firms' internationalization?

The goal of this paper is to investigate the link between the length of a firm-bank relationship and firm’s internationalization. The analysis is carried out on matched firm-bank micro-data from a survey of Italian enterprises from 1998 to 2003. We obtain two main results. First, a longer relationship with the main bank fosters firms’ foreign direct investment (FDI) while it does not affect the export status of the enterprises not engaging in FDI. Second, the probability of a firm undertaking FDI further increases if its main bank is itself internationalized by holding foreign subsidiaries.