This paper assesses how much mortgage interest rates in Italy are priced on credit risk as proxied by the probability of household mortgage delinquency estimated using the EU-Silc database. Owing to data availability, we restrict the analysis of mortgage pricing to Italian households. Consistent with the more widespread use of credit scoring, estimates indicate that Italian lenders have increasingly priced mortgage interest rates on household credit risk. For mortgages granted between 2000 and 2007, we find that a 1% point increase in the probability of default is associated with a 21 basis point rise in mortgage interest rates, lower than the 38 basis point premium Edelberg (2006) estimated for the US at the end of the 1990s.

Although the theory of multinational banking has pointed out the importance of local profit opportunities, the empirical evidence is still poor and deserves further investigation. To this end, we analyse entry decisions and activity levels of foreign banks operating in Italy between 1983 and 1998. We consider 22 OECD countries, 10 of which had at least one bank (branch or subsidiary) in Italy. Entries and activity levels were related to the degree of economic integration as well as to the financial market features of the home country relative to Italy. Unlike other studies, besides economic integration, the relative profitability of the banking activity proves to be a significant variable in that it highlights the importance of local market conditions. In the past decade, increased competition in the Italian banking sector has reduced these profit opportunities, driving foreign banks towards more innovative sectors of financial intermediation.