It is believed that privatizations substantially contributed to boost stock markets through the 1980s and 1990s. However, through which channels did that materialize? We test whether privatizations - improving households' acquaintance with the risk and return characteristics of stocks through...

With the new European fiscal compact, fiscal rules of budget balance over the cycle have been introduced to limit the growth of the debt ratio to GDP. The objection may arise that they would have an adverse effect, especially in the long run on employment and growth. We test the proposition...

In this paper, we model and forecast monthly budget balance expenditures. The annual dimension of budget figures is integrated with an approach based on higher frequency data. To this end we develop an econometric model (disaggregated at expenditures category level) based on behavioral equations...

In this paper, we provide a description of the Italian Treasury Econometric Model (ITEM). We illustrate its general structure and model properties, especially with regard to the economy's response to changes in policy and in other dimensions of the economic environment. One of the key features...

The aim of this paper is to propose a new method for forecasting Italian inflation. We expand on a standard factor model framework (see Stock and Watson (1998)) along several dimensions. To start with we pay special attention to the modeling of the autoregressive component of the inflation....

We estimate the effect of trade openness and institutional quality on productivity of Central and Eastern European accession countries. Our approach builds on recent economic literature dealing with the so-called "deep" determinants of economic growth (Frankel and Romer, 1999, Hall and Jones,...

The aim of this paper is to review the properties of the newly released MeMo-It econometric model by looking at its supply side. The analysis hinges on the link between potential output, which determines the level of GDP in the medium term, and all the channels of transmission that can affect...