The aim of the present note is to outline a general, but at the same time comprehensive, framework of the array of instruments that regulators can use in their activity of prudential regulation and supervision. Such a framework should be applicable to a variety of geographical and historical...

This paper studies the effects of differences in local administrative burdens in Italy in the years preceding a major reform that sped up firm registration procedures. Combining regulatory data from a survey on Italian provinces before the reform (costs and time to start a business) with...

This paper develops an early warning system for sovereign debt crises, broadly defined as episodes of outright default, failure of a country to be current on external obligations and substantial access to IMF resources. It estimates a multinomial logit model that makes it possible to...

This paper builds a dynamic model of the information flow between partially informed financial institutions and a public agency. The financial institutions decide how to allocate their portfolio between a risk-free technology with a known payoff and a risky technology whose payoff is unknown....

We develop a model which accounts for the observed equity premium and average risk free rate, without implying counterfactually high risk aversion. The model also does well in accounting for business cycle phenomena.

The paper investigates the opinions of Italian families on the advisability and the possibility of saving. The analysis was carried out using the monthly micro-data underlying the Italian consumer survey conducted by Isae up to 2010 and by Istat thereafter. The results show that in recent years...

The role of movements in real rates in explaining the relationship between long and short-term interest rates is explored using a model of optimal government debt management.

The act of choosing can influence maximizing behaviour for at least two distinct reasons: 1) process significance and 2) decisional inescapability. The constructive programme of the paper is combined with critical appraisal of the implications of these concerns for rational decisions about...

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 security. We relate this measure to consumers' endowment and attributes and to measures of background risk and liquidity constraints. We...

We assess the impact of low-skilled immigration on capital intensity. We first present a model characterized by frictions in the labor market and firms' asymmetric information on workers' skills and show that firms can react to the immigration-induced reduction of their workforce's skill level...