The aim of this paper is to characterize the time series properties of earnings in Italy, using the panel data set drawn from the Bank of Italy Survey of Household Income and Wealth (SHIW). The Bank of Italy Survey is drawn every two years: this feature raises identification problems as the...

In old age, consumption can fluctuate because of shocks to available resources and because health shocks affect utility from consumption. We find that even temporary drops in income and health are associated with drops in consumption and most of the effect of temporary drops in health on...

While "'Tis impossible to be sure of any thing but Death and Taxes" (Bullock, 1716), the structure of taxes and their burden has undergone large and frequent changes over time. We provide a brief history of the U.S. federal income tax reforms since the 1960s, we calculate effective federal...

In the U.S, after age 65, households face income and health risks and a large fraction of these risks are transitory. While consumption significantly responds to transitory income shocks, out-of-pocket medical expenses do not. In contrast, both consumption and out-of-pocket medical expenses...

In this work we revisit the retirement consumption puzzle using Italian panel data. As emphasized in the literature, the observed consumption drop might be due to unexpected wealth shocks at retirement, which modify optimal consumption plans. Using an Euler equation approach, we test the impact...

In this paper we propose a method to characterize the time series properties of individual consumption, income and interest rates using micro data, as studies in labour economics have characterized the time series properties of hours and earnings. Our approach, however, does not remove aggregate...