Beyond crises: A new perspective on the evolution of the Italian banking sector in the long run (1890-1973)

Navigating the blurred boundary between historical inquiry and methodological innovation, this work presents four contributions that leverage balance sheet data on the Italian banking sector contained in the Archivio Storico del Credito in Italia (ASCI) database to quantitatively reassess traditional narratives of Italian banking. By adopting an overlooked bank-level perspective, it aims to complement—and at times challenge—a long-standing historiographical position that has largely relied on aggregate or institutionally segmented analyses, often anchored in a crisis-centric interpretation of banking history.