Using a representative sample of Italian investors, we estimate the risk associated with social security benefits by eliciting for each individual the subjective distribution of the replacement rate as a summary indicator of social security wealth. Pension risk varies across individuals in a way...

This paper proposes an approximation to the consumption function in the buffer-stock model. The approximation is based on the analytic properties of the consumption function in the buffer-stock model. In such model, the consumption function is increasing and concave and its derivative is bounded...

This notes proposes an approximation to the consumption function in the buffer-stock model.

We provide evidence that the quality of health care affects health outcomes, exploiting the substantial variability in the quality of the Italian public health service. The data are drawn from the 2001 Survey of Health, Aging and Wealth, providing detailed information on health status, and...

The literature on durable consumption is still small by comparison with that on non-durable consumption, but the last few years have seen a number of both theoretical and empirical studies. This paper surveys these recent contributions and tries to highlight the main advances and the open issues...

This paper proposes an approximation to the consumption function. The approximation is based on the analytic properties of the consumption function in the buffer-stock model. In such model, the consumption function is increasing and concave and its derivative is bounded from above and below. We...

We study the relation between cognitive abilities and stockholding using the recent Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), which has detailed data on wealth and portfolio composition of individuals aged 50+ in 11 European countries and three indicators of cognitive abilities:...

We estimate the effect of estate taxation on bequests exploiting a sequence of Italian reforms that culminated with the reduction of estate taxes in 1999 and their abolishment in 2001. To perform our exercise, we use the 1993-2006 Survey of Household Income and Wealth, which has data on real...

We estimate the portfolio effect of changes in social security wealth exploiting a decade of Italian pension reforms as a source of exogenous variation. The Italian Survey of Household Income and Wealth records detailed portfolio data and elicits expectations of retirement outcomes, thus...