In most advanced countries, future retirees will have to rely less on social security schemes and more on private pension plans, which mostly leave to the worker the choice between ashing-in or annuitizing pension wealth at retirement. Therefore, a better understanding of the determinants of the...

This paper examines the impact of MIB30 Index Futures on the volatility of the Italian Stock Exchange. The results suggest that the onset of futures trading may have led to diminished daily volatility. They also suggest that the nature of the volatility itself has not changed between the...

This paper examines whether star-analysts have better forecasting abilities than non-star-analysts. Our results reveal that star-analysts' earnings forecasts outperform their peers' forecasts. Because the level of corporate governance plays an important role for the general level of forecast...

Using Italian data, we estimate an option value model to quantify the effectof financial incentives on retirement choices. As far as we know, this isthe first empirical study to estimate the conditional multiple-years modelput forward by Stock and Wise (1990). This implies that we account...

This paper looks at welfare reforms in Italy and their effects on labour supply. I focus on social security reforms, which have taken place in the 1990s and on labour market reforms. Old age social security expenditure in Italy is high (14% of GDP) and the system has been very generous on early...

A structural model for retirement and employment based on a flexible, parametric utility function is developed. The model requires only cross section data and is estimated on survey data for Italy and register data for Norway. The estimates indicate that the preference structure among...

This paper looks at welfare reforms in Italy and their effects on labour supply. I focus on social security reforms, which have taken place in the 1990s and on labour market reforms. Old age social security expenditure in Italy is high (14% of GDP) and the system has been very generous on early...