Liquidity Constraint on the Production of Firms in Southern Italy

The paper shows how small and medium enterprises located in the less developed regions of Southern Italy face higher liquidity constraints compared to the firms in the Central-Northern Italian regions. The reasons for these constraints are the undersized nature of firms and higher risk of business activity. Consequently, credit rationing is more extensive. In order to analyse the effects on the potential growth of firms’ production, a simple model is presented, followed by estimates for growth. The results confirm the existence of a bottleneck of financial resources devoted to current finance production that limits the accumulation of working capital even when faced with favourable market opportunities.