This paper investigates the causes of the Italian consumption bust of the early 1990s by estimating deviations from 'normal' consumption using household level data for 1985-94. The data set used is a particularly rich, but as yet unexplored, source recently released by ISTAT. It contains...

This paper investigates the causes of the Italian consumption decline of the early 1990’s by estimating deviations from normal consumption for 1985-94. The paper uses household data from the Survey of Family Budgets (SFB) from ISTAT, a particularly rich but relatively unexplored source...