Nuclear properties, derived as described in Sect. 3; the error bars reported represent the mean uncertainties obtained as detailed in Sect. 3.4. Left panel: normalized distribution in BH mass (blue shaded histogram); the black dashed line shows the distribution for the “control sample”. Central panel: distribution in bolometric luminosity obtained assuming the luminosity-dependent κ_{2−10 keV} in Eq. (2), green shaded histogram; the red dotted line and the blue dashed line represent the distributions in bolometric luminosity obtained assumed a constant κ_{2−10 keV} = 1 (i.e., the distribution of the intrinsic hard X-ray luminosity) and κ_{2−10 keV} = 50, respectively. The black dashed line shows the distribution in bolometric luminosity for the “control sample”, computed from optical/UV luminosities (Shen et al. 2011). Right panel: distribution in Eddington ratio (yellow shaded histogram); the black dashed line shows the distribution in Eddington ratio for the “control sample” (Shen et al. 2011). Grey dotted, dashed, and long-dashed vertical lines define the regions of λ_Edd < 0.01, 0.1 < λ_Edd < 5, and high-super-Eddington accretion, respectively.