We study the relation between cognitive ability and the decision to invest in stocks using the recent Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). The survey has detailed data on wealth and portfolio composition of individuals aged 50+ in 11 European countries and three indicators...

The 1993 Survey of Household Income and Wealth, a large cross-section of the Italian population covering 24,000 individuals, reports detailed information on children’s attendance of public and private schools and parents’ assessments of the quality of public schools in the city of residence....

We estimate Euler equations for a number of countries and find that the excess sensitivity of consumption to current income fluctuations is higher in the countries where consumers borrow less. The low level of consumer debt in these countries can be interpreted either as a symptom of tighter...

Previous tests for liquidity constraints using consumption Euler equations have frequently used asset-based sample separation rules, arguing that low wealth consumers are more likely to be constrained. We propose an alternative sample separation rule using direct information on borrowing...

In this paper we provide an explanation for three features that characterize the Italian savings rate: by international standards, Italy is a `high-saving' country; the Italian savings rate has declined markedly in the last three decades; the correlation between saving and growth is stronger in...

The diversity in the current degree of financial development across the EU can be a great opportunity at a time where this area is poised to become increasingly financially integrated. Integration should accelerate the development of the most backward financial markets, and allow companies from...

We argue that health care quality has an important impact on economic inequality and on saving behaviour. We exploit district-wide variability in health care quality provided by the Italian universal public health system to identify the effect of quality on income inequality, health inequality...

We analyse the welfare implications of liquidity constraints for households in an overlapping generations model with growth. In a closed economy with exogenous technical progress, liquidity constraints reduce welfare if the economy is dynamically inefficient. But if it is dynamically efficient,...

We present a model with adverse selection where information sharing between lenders arises endogenously. Lenders' incentives to share information about borrowers are positively related to the mobility and heterogeneity of borrowers, to the size of the credit market and to advances in information...

We explore the determinants of the international pattern of home ownership using the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), a collection of microeconomic data on fourteen OECD countries. In most, the cross-section is repeated over time and includes several demographic variables carefully matched between...