The 1991 Italian Survey of Household Income and Wealth contains detailed information on how respondents acquired their main residence and any other real estate. This information is used to estimate the impact of inter vivos transfers on the saving period required to purchase a house and on the...

Exploiting three earthquakes in Italy as quasi-experiments, we analyze the response of homeowners’ consumption to transfers targeted to finance housing repair and reconstruction. To the extent that funds are made available up-front, these transfers are akin to loans, mainly affecting the...

This paper provides a joint analysis of household stockholding participation, stock location among stockholding modes, and participation spillovers, using data from the US Survey of Consumer Finances. Our multivariate choice model matches observed participation rates, conditional and...

Using life-history survey data from eleven European countries, we investigate whether childhood conditions, such as socioeconomic status, cognitive abilities and health problems influence portfolio choice and risk attitudes later in life. After controlling for the corresponding conditions in...

The life-cycle hypothesis posits that saving is positive for young households and negative for the retired, so that wealth should be hump-shaped. Yet, if one looks at the microeconomic evidence on saving by age, dissaving by the elderly is limited or absent. But the saving measures usually...

This paper estimates a lower bound to the foregone gains of incomplete portfolios, which are in turn a lower bound to the (unobserved) entry costs that could rationalize non-participation to financial markets. My estimates provide a heuristic test for the cost-based explanation of limited...

Increasing marginal tax rates and making payments to the poor reduce inequality and introduce savings dis-incentives. Using a heterogeneous agent model with incomplete markets, we show that higher taxes (and transfers) decrease consumption inequality but also mean savings and mean consumption....

Expectations and riskiness of future earnings are crucial determinants of individuals’ intertemporal choices. Yet, the empirical literature lacks reliable measures of the distribution of future income. Lacking direct observability, the latter is usually estimated inferring moments of the...

We estimate the effect of taxes on intergenerational transfers exploiting a sequence of Italian reforms culminating with the abolishment of transfer taxes. We use the 1993-2006 Survey of Household Income and Wealth, which has data on real estate transfers received and information on potential...

We estimate the portfolio effect of changes in social security wealth exploiting a decade of Italian pension reforms as a source of exogenous variation. The Italian Survey of Household Income and Wealth records detailed portfolio data and elicits expectations of retirement outcomes, thus...