According to economic theory, elderly homeowners should be much more eager than they actually are to adopt financial instruments allowing them to borrow against home equity. This paper investigates the determinants of interest for the Italian elderly in one such instrument, the reverse mortgage....

A growing body of literature shows that financial literacy affects household savings and investment choices. Less attention has, however, been devoted to its effect on debt behavior. This paper contributes to filling this gap by considering how financial literacy influences household attitudes...

The concept of familiarity has been used in finance theory to explain apparent paradoxes in people's behavior, such as the home bias in portfolio choices. This study investigates whether (lack of) familiarity with the language of financial consumers may contribute to an explanation of the...

Financial literacy has important implications for economic reforms. Reforms are meant to change people's behavior and their effectiveness crucially depends on the ability of citizens to recognize and generally approve, their necessity, their general design and their “sense of direction”....

Both economic and epidemiological literature has shown that perceived high strain at work and lack of social infrastructures are good predictors of sick-leave. The latter is particularly relevant in countries where facilities for children and care services are scarce and women are asked to fill...

Parents generally care for their kids, either for altruistic or for strategic reasons. To secure them a better life than their own, they can invest in the children's human capital or accumulate real wealth to bequeath to them. In equilibrium, with complete markets and no imperfection, the...

By requiring individuals to decide whether to participate in (newly established) pension funds, how much to contribute and how to invest their retirement wealth, pension reforms have raised concerns about the ability of households to deal with financial decisions. Using the Bank of Italy's...