Enrico Stivella

I am an applied economist with a particular interest in the transferability of human capital. My research examines how high-skilled workers transfer their knowledge as they change jobs, and how these transfers affect economic outcomes.

I will be on the Econ and Finance job market in Fall 2025.

JOB MARKET PAPER

Bankers on the Move: Relationship Capital in Credit Markets

Information is a core input in financial intermediation, yet little is known about how it is transmitted through labor mobility.
In this paper we are able to link administrative data on loan contracts and employment histories to track the movements of bank managers and their portfolios of client firms across financial institutions.
We show that when a manager switches employers, firms in their prior portfolio are three times more likely to initiate a lending relationship with the new bank.
To isolate the causal role of manager mobility, we exploit variation in the timing of job switches and leverage exogenous shocks to mobility induced by branch closures.
This effect reflects both a higher propensity of firms to apply for credit and a greater likelihood of loan approval.
We further document that the resulting lending relationships are associated with lower interest rates and lower default rates.
Our findings underscore the importance of individual-level human capital in shaping credit market outcomes and highlight a novel channel for information transmission in the financial sector. 
 

WORKING PAPERS

• D'Andrea, A. and Stivella E. "Bankers on the Move: Relationship Capital in Credit Markets"
• Stivella, E. "Scientific Resilience: How Italian Nuclear Physics changed after the Chernobyl disaster"
• Stivella, E. "Procuring Innovation: Evidence from the SBIR program"

WORK IN PROGRESS

• Benmelech, E., Hoffman, E., Serrano Velarde, N. and Stivella, E. "Start Up Nation: Spillovers from Breakthrough Technologies"