ABSTRACT
The role of the banking system has been markedly pro-cyclic with abundant short-term credit, even to finance investment projects in the expansion phase, and a very rapid reduction of credit lines in the negative phase of conjuncture. The 1990s began in a climate of uncertainty: it is no longer sufficient to reproduce the past model of development in order to guarantee dynamic competitiveness to the ‘Insubrian area’. This is an area of some two million inhabitants, closely connected along the North-South axis to the metropolitan area of Milan, but showing a high degree of economic autonomy and a rising awareness of its own potential. The milieu represents for the economic agents belonging to it a sort of cultural software which determines, or at least heavily influences, the behaviour and the decisions of the actors.
