On the informative content of sanctions
This investigation exploits a new database, which merges the balance sheet items of Italian banks with sanctions by Bank of Italy and CONSOB in the last decade. We highlight the informative content of sanctions as key for the success of the supervisory activity. First, we evaluate the effects of sanctions on bank performance: we find a negative impact, more pronounced for those banks that were repeatedly sanctioned, for reasons mainly related to risk assessment and funding strategies.