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...

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 use the dispersion of the Federal Budget Balance forecasts from Consensus Economics to produce a new measure of fiscal uncertainty; constant horizon forecasts are obtained through mixture distributions. The scheme we propose has several advantages over previous uncertainty measures. First (as...

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...

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...

Economic uncertainty is an important factor behind macroeconomic fluctuations: in an uncertain environment, firms reduce hiring and investment, financial intermediaries are more reluctant to lend and households increase their propensity to save. In the present paper, we study the effects of the...