In this paper I estimate the age-wealth profile under two different identification assumptions about age, cohort and time effects. According to the life-cycle model, the two set of assumptions should yield similar age-wealth profiles. Using the 1984-1993 Italian Survey of Household Income and...

We study Resale Price Maintenance (RPM) in a successive monopolies framework with adverse selection and moral hazard. The analysis compares both the private and the wel- fare properties of vertical contracts based on retail price restrictions with those derived under quantity .xing arrangements...

This paper relies on sectoral-level data to interpret aggregate fluctuations of labor productivity and employment in US as due to exogenous disturbances. A shock determining permanent effect on the real investment good price may reasonably be interpreted as an investment-specific technology...

Two players are involved in a joint project during which a decision must be reached. Each player has private information about future profits. Authority gives one player the right to decide first in a pre-defined set of alternatives. In this framework, I show that (partial) authority should be...

We investigate whether information sharing among banks has affected credit market performance in the transition countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, using a large sample of firm-level data. Our estimates show that information sharing is associated with improved availability...

In this study we compare evidence based on time use data for three countries: Italy, Germany and Sweden. While in all these countries working mothers appear to dedicate less time to child care than non-working mothers, in Sweden the difference is smallest in absolute terms as well as...

In this paper we analyse the equilibrium degree of commitment in monetary policy to an independent central banker whose preferences are imperfectly observed by private agents. We characterize the incentive compatible strategies by a central bank in office for two periods with no restrictions on...

This paper performs an efficiency analysis of households portfolios based on the comparison of observed portfolios with the mean-variance frontier of assets returns. Data on household portfolios are drawn from the 2001 Centro Einaudi survey, a representative sample of the Italian population with...

We analyze the production of electricity from n power stations situated along a river in a dynamic model. Each power station's production of electricity is constrained by the quantity of water available to it (capacity constraint) as well as limitations of reservoir capacity (storage...

We analyze the political determinants of investor and employment protection. Our model predicts that proportional electoral systems are conducive to weaker investor protection and stronger employment protection than majoritarian systems. This prediction is consistent with international panel...