Homestead exemptions to personal bankruptcy allow households to retain their home equity up to a limit determined at the state level. Households that may experience bankruptcy thus have an incentive to bias their portfolios towards home equity. Using US household data from the Survey of Income...

This report has been drafted as part of a study into measures to combat discrimination in the EU Member States, funded by the European Community Action Programme to combat discrimination.The present report was completed on March 1st, 2007, prior to the adoption of four legislative bills proposed...

This report has been drafted for the European Network of Legal Experts in the nondiscrimination field (on the grounds of Race or Ethnic origin, Age, Disability, Religion or belief and Sexual Orientation) and it has been drafted as part of a study into measures to combat discrimination in the EU...

This publication has been commissioned by the European Commission under the framework of the European Community Action Programme to combat discrimination (2001-2006). This programme was established to support the effective implementation of new EU anti-discrimination legislation. The six-year...

Inflation expectations constitute a subject of particular contemporary interest to central banks, especially those pursuing a monetary policy based on a strategy of direct inflation targeting. Macroeconomic theory indicates that the transmission of monetary policy impulses and their impact on...

Based on the householdsu0092 utility maximisation, a closed form approximation of the consumption function is derived and the deep parameters of the consumption function are estimated using aggregate euro area data. The novel element in our approach is the parameterisation of the information...

Does the general public know what central banks do? Is this kind of knowledge relevant? Using a survey of Dutch households, we investigate these questions for the case of the European Central Bank (ECB). Our findings suggest that knowledge on the ECB’s objectives is far from perfect. Both a...

Using comparable survey data from twelve European countries from 1994 to 2001 we investigate households’ attitudes towards mortgage indebtedness. We find that a given debt burden creates much higher distress in countries with fewer mortgage holders relative to countries where a significant...