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...

The paper provides an econometric analysis of the aggregate saving function of Italian households in the vein of the life cycle theory. Results from an ECM representation based on yearly data for 1951-1998 point to depressive effects on private consumption of recent reforms of social security,...

Women�s labor force participation is lowest in Italy among the OECD countries. Moreover, the participation rate of married women is positively correlated with their husbands' income. We show that high tax rates together with tax credits and transfers raise the burden for two-earner...

We consider a difference-in-differences setting with a continuous outcome, such as wages or expenditure. The standard practice is to take the logarithm of the outcome and then interpret the results as an approximation of the multiplicative treatment effect on the original outcome. We argue that...

By allowing median voter�s location and preferred policy to change over time, a variety of redistributive policies results in the long-run with no unique relationship to inequality. Single outcome depends on the interaction between the pure economic structure and policy action in...

The real estate sector is of particular interest from a central bank's perspective; due to its size, it directly and indirectly affects economic developments, financial stability and the monetary policy stance. The volume collects the papers by economists of the Bank of Italy and the discussions...

This paper studies the determinants of Chinese households� saving. Domestic saving in China is the highest in the world in terms of GDP and it is mirrored in a large and persistent current account surplus. First, we show that notwithstanding the rising contribution of government and firms...

In this paper I estimate the impact of changes in real and financial wealth � proxied by house and stock market prices � on private consumption for a panel of sixteen emerging economies in Asia and Central and Eastern Europe. Using recent econometric techniques for heterogeneous...

The relationship between the demographic structure and the saving rate of a society is the reflection of the aggregation of the behaviour of heterogeneous households, differing from one another in the type of living arrangements and in the characteristics of their members. In order to contribute...

This paper analyzes the determinants of Italian households� participation in the debt market, considering both demand and supply effects and using the Bank of Italy�s Survey of Household Income and Wealth. The probability of debt is positively influenced by age (until 35 years), which...