We propose a portfolio selection model based on a class of monotone preferences that coincide with mean-variance preferences on their domain of monotonicity, but differ where mean-variance preferences fail to be monotone and are therefore not economically meaningful. The functional associated to...

Financial exclusion concerns 2.5 billion individuals and more than 450 million enterprises. The G20 countries are committed to the reduction of this phenomenon. The Bank of Italy has a fundamental role in the field of financial inclusion, both on a national and an international scale through...

In the 2008-09 school year the Bank of Italy and the Italian Ministry of Education started an experimental program to incorporate financial education into school curricula. This paper describes the experience since then. According to the program, teachers receive training from the Bank on...

We combine individual and aggregate-level level data on educational attainment to study the determinants of university drop-out in Italy, one of the worst performers among developed countries. Based on detailed information on a representative sample of secondary school graduates and on local...

This paper summarizes the results attained by the Eurosystem in harmonizing the statistics used for the conduct of monetary policy. Since the creation of the euro area, in January 1999, significant progress has been made in the harmonization of data on banks’ balance sheets, central banks and...

The paper looks at the characteristics of Italian non-financial firms that accessed the bond market for the first time between 2002 and 2013. The results of logit estimations indicate that first-time bond issuers are significantly larger and more frequently listed on the stock exchange than...

Standard risk metrics tend to underestimate the true risks of hedge funds because of serial correlation in the reported returns. Getmansky, Lo, and Makarov(2004) derive mean, variance, Sharpe ratio, and beta formulae adjusted for serial correlation. Following their lead, we derive adjusted...

The recent financial crisis has clearly demonstrated the exposure of defined contribution (DC) pension scheme members to extreme financial market risks. This paper argues that the government might offer DC plan members a minimum return guarantee, funded by risk based premia. Option pricing...

Using a clustering procedure,we classify Italian funds ex-post on the basis of the composition of their portfolios and find that the optimal number of clusters is equal to 4. The four groups which result from the statistical classification closely match the 4-level aggregation of the 20 ex-ante...