We provide a theoretical and empirical study of the relation between financial development and the size of the underground economy. In our theoretical framework agents allocate investment between a low-return technology which can be operated with internal funds, and a high-return technology...

The paper reviews the literature on these tax incentives, with special focus on long-term saving, housing, and household liabilities. The paper addresses several areas of policy intervention: (1) the interest rate effect on personal saving; (2) the effect of tax incentives on long-term mandatory...

The theoretical literature suggests that taxation can have a large impact on household portfolio selection and allocation. In this paper we consider the tax treatment of life insurance, considering the cancellation of tax incentives in Italian life insurance contracts for investors with high...

Until very recently, health information has been mostly absent from Italian surveys of household budgets and economic conditions. Interest in the association between health outcomes, economic resources and labor market conditions has led us to fill the gap with new microeconomic data. The...

We discuss the current state of stockownership among households in major European countries (France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the UK), drawing parallels and contrasts with the US experience. We use detailed microeconomic datasets and explore the extent to which observed...

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...

The paper reviews some of the most important results of the Life Cycle Hypothesis for understanding individual and aggregate saving behaviour. It then turns to the implications for fiscal policy and social security, highlighting Modigliani’s seminal contributions. Over time competing theories...

The paper studies the determinants of international differences in household indebtedness, and inquires whether indebtedness is associated with increased “financial fragility”, as measured by the sensitivity of household arrears and insolvencies to macroeconomic shocks. It also investigates...

In most of the postwar period Italy featured an abnormally high saving rate, compared to most other industrialized countries. But this is no longer true. Under any definition, in the last decade the Italian saving rate has fallen below the average of the developed economies. Why was the Italian...

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...