The volume collects the essays presented at the 15th Workshop on Public Finance organised by Banca d'Italia in Perugia from 4 to 6 April 2013. The workshop focused on the link between fiscal policy and macroeconomic imbalances and comprised four sessions. The first session concentrated on the...

This paper analyses the business cycle properties of 183 time series relevant to the Italian economy, including real, monetary and international variables. We propose new monthly coincident and leading composite indicators for the Italian business cycle; the leading indicator anticipates the...

This paper analyses the business cycle properties of 183 time series relevant to the Italian economy, including real, monetary and international variables. We propose new monthly coincident and leading composite indicators for the Italian business cycle; the leading indicator anticipates the...

This paper provides an explanation for the postponement of youth emancipation in the Italian context mainly characterized by a sharp increase in both house and rent prices together with stagnant disposable income over the past decade. We first assemble a unique database related to the housing...

This analysis aims at studying joblessness and the effect of the economic crisis at the household rather than the individual level. With respect to the main European countries, in Italy the jobless household rate is lower because of the larger household size (the more adults present the lower...

The paper offers a critical assessment of the central proposition of the ��financial instability hypothesis��, i.e. that phases of expansion and investment growth are harbingers of increasing instability that can endogenously generate a financial crisis. As a preliminary, it...

We use household survey data to construct a direct measure of absolute risk aversion based on the maximum price a consumer is willing to pay to buy a risky asset. We relate this measure to a set of consumers� decisions that in theory should vary with attitude towards risk. We find that...

Assembling information from several sources and a drawing on specially designed new survey, this paper finds that the shortfall in the supply of child care facilities remains large with respect to potential demand but is less severe with respect to the effective demand by households in Italy....

This paper presents the main findings of the Survey on Household Income and Wealth for the Italian region of Lombardy. To get a large enough sample, the observations on 2004, 2006, and 2008 were pooled. The work sets out the structural characteristics for Lombardy prior to the crisis, with...

Using different econometric specifications this paper analyzes the relationship between the time parents spend with their children, child-related expenditure and the results obtained by them, with particular attention to gender differences. The authors use PSID-CDS data from 1997 to 2007 and...