We measure the return to education by accounting for differences in wage and unemployment risk confronted by individuals with different levels of education. When markets are incomplete, risk-averse individuals value jobs to which less income risk is associated. In this case a measure of the...

Recent models with liquidity constraints and impatience emphasize that consumers use savings to buffer income fluctuations. When wealth is below an optimal target, consumers try to increase their buffer stock of wealth by saving more, while, if wealth is above target, they increase consumption....

We argue that health care quality has an important impact on economic inequality and on saving behaviour. We exploit district-wide variability in health care quality provided by the Italian universal public health system to identify the effect of quality on income inequality, health inequality...

Expectations and riskiness of future earnings are crucial determinants of individuals’ intertemporal choices. Yet, the empirical literature lacks reliable measures of the distribution of future income. Lacking direct observability, the latter is usually estimated inferring moments of the...

We examine the dynamics of wealth accumulation distribution in Italy using data drawn from the Survey of Household Income and Wealth, a representative survey of the Italian population conducted by the Bank of Italy. We compare survey data with National Accounts data and discuss sample...

The authors investigate how worker-owned and capitalist enterprises differ with respect to wages, employment, and capital in Italy, the market economy with the greatest incidence of worker-owned and worker-managed firms. Estimates calculated using a matched employer-worker panel data set for the...

This paper provides an introduction to the special issue of the Review of Economic Dynamics on "Cross Sectional Facts for Macroeconomists''. The issue documents, for nine countries, the level and the evolution, over time and over the life cycle, of several dimensions of economic inequality,...

We exploit time variation in the degree of development of local credit markets and matched employer-employee data to assess the role of the firm as an internal credit market. In less developed local credit markets firms can offer a flatter wage-tenure profile than firms in more developed credit...

We exploit time variation in the degree of development of local credit markets and matched workers-firm data with workers histories to assess the role of the firm as an internal loans market. By tilting the workers wage-tenure profile around their tenure-productivity profile, the firm can...

We exploit time variation in the degree of development of local credit markets and matched employer-employee data to assess the role of the firm as an internal credit market. In less developed local credit markets firms can offer a atter wage-tenure profile than firms in more developed credit...