Compared with other European countries, the Italian labour market stands out for the low level of both female participation and fertility. In this paper we focus on the employment patterns of Italian mothers around the time of childbirth. Our hypothesis is that the difficulties involved in...

We evaluate the macroeconomic effects of shocks specific to the oil market, which mainly reflect fluctuations in precautionary demand for oil driven by uncertainty about future supplies. A two-stage identification procedure is used. First, daily changes in the futures-spot spread proxy for...

The objective of the paper is to adjust for the bias due to unit non-response and measurement error in survey estimates of total household financial wealth. Sample surveys are a useful source of information on household wealth. Yet, survey estimates are affected by non-sampling errors. In...

This paper analyzes the macroeconomic effects on the U.S. economy of news about oil supply by estimating a VAR. Information contained in daily quotations of oil futures contracts is exploited to estimate the dynamic path of oil prices following a shock. Hence, differently from the VAR literature...