Using a new survey of European households, we study how exogenous variation in the macroeconomic uncertainty perceived by households affects their spending decisions. We use randomized information treatments that provide different types of information about the first and/or second moments of...

This paper examines the role of culture in households' saving decisions. Exploiting the historical language borders within Switzerland, I isolate the effect of households' exposure to certain language groups from economic, institutional, demographic and geographic factors for a homogeneous and...

We examine the role of trust in households' decisions to hold a bank account and to switch to a new bank. We explore Italian household-level data that contain restricted information on the banks that the households are doing business with, as well as measures of trust in the households' main...

This paper studies the determinants of being unbanked in the euro area and the United States as well as the effects of being unbanked on wealth accumulation. Based on household-level data from the euro area Household Finance and Consumption Survey and the U.S. Survey of Consumer Finance, it...

This paper uses representative individual household data from Luxembourg to evaluate how severe economic conditions could affect bank exposure to the household sector. Information on household income, expenses and liquid assets are used to calculate household-specific probabilities of default...

We use cross-country microdata to analyse the risk taking of households in Europe and the US. Concerning the extensive as well as the intensive margin of risky assets, European households differ substantially from US households; but also inside Europe we document substantial differences....

Households face earnings risk which is non-normal and varies by age and over the income distribution. We show that allowing for these rich features of earnings dynamics, in the context of a structurally estimated life-cycle portfolio choice model, helps to rationalize the limited participation...

Using administrative data on mortgages issued in Italy between 2018 and 2019, this paper estimates loan demand elasticities to maturity and interest rate. We find that households are responsive to both contract terms: a 1% decrease in interest rate increases the average loan size by 0.22%...