This study investigates the link between cognitive abilities and civic engagement of older Europeans (aged 50+), using waves two and three of the SHARE dataset. An instrumental variable approach is employed in an attempt to disentangle possible endogeneity issues arising between cognition and...

The Great Recession has brought along a rearrangement of living patterns both in the U.S. and in Europe. This study seeks to identify the consequences of the “doubling up” of two or more generations of adults into the same household. In particular, a difference-in-difference (DID) propensity...

Investment performance evaluation is one of the pillars of finance and its techniques have refined throughout the years. This work focuses on the evaluation of the investment performance achieved through a top-down investment strategy analyzed using the Brinson model: a set of techniques that...

We study various methods of aggregating individual judgments and individual priorities in group decision making with the AHP. The focus is on the empirical properties of the various methods, mainly on the extent to which the various aggregation methods represent an accurate approximation of the...

This paper estimates the causal effect of parental education on children’s education in 13 European countries, using representative data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). A novel instrumental variable approach is used to solve the endogeneity issue. We combine...

Most market structures are neither perfectly or monopolistically competitive: they are characterized by a small number of large firms engaged in strategic interactions in their production and investment decisions. Yet, most of our economic theories are still based on a simplified world where...

We study the art market in the Venetian Republic from 1550 to 1750 analyzing the determinants of the prices (adjusted for the cost of living measured by the cost of wheat) of figurative paintings. Reputation of the painters, size of the paintings and other quantifiable factors affect prices as...

Italian firms have recently engaged in direct investment abroad through the establishment of production facilities in China and India. Using data gathered from interviews conducted in those countries in 2009 with 16 Italian predominantly small and medium-sized firms, this article explores: the...

In this contribution we propose a dynamic tracking error problem and we consider the problem of monitoring at discrete point the shortfall of the portfolio below a set of given reference levels of wealth. We formulate and solve the resulting dynamic optimization problem using stochastic...

This contribution deals with options on assets which pay cash dividends. Pricing methods which consider discrete dividends are usually computationally expensive; a first purpose of this paper is to study efficient and accurate numerical procedures which yield consistent prices for both European...