countries. France, Germany, and Italy have large pay-as-you-go pension systems and vulnerable labor markets. At the same time …

household level information on consumption, income and portfolio holdings. We propose to use data on equity fund ownership to …

’s prosperity. The paper focuses on olitical events in Italy over the past 35 years and asks whether the adoption of the euro in … 1999 has helped insulate Italy’s financial markets from the adverse consequences of its traditionally unstable political … system. We find that important political events have exerted a statistically and economically significant effect on Italy …