We specify a VEC model based on six main macroeconomic imbalances to explain the Great European Recession, in Germany, France, Spain and Italy, from 1999 to 2013, estimating their long-term relationships. We focus on employment and unemployment as the main imbalances and identify consumption and...

The aim of this paper is to explain the economic causes and consequences of the sharp decline in Italy’s fertility rate, the most dramatic decline in the world together with that in Japan. The main cause is shown to originate in the mid-seventies: a sudden increase in the unemployment rate...

We analyze households’ economic freedom to determine their standard of living, characterized by their capacity to spend on housing, utilities, food, and transport: economic poverty is a lack of freedom due to budgetary constraints. We propose three new measures. The first is the classical...

The aim of the paper is to unbundle the main economic variables involved in the European Crisis and clarify their reciprocal relationship. The variables considered are: unemployment, inflation, consumptions, investments and current accounts. We use annual, quarterly and monthly data, until 2012,...

We analyze the European Welfare State according to a theoretical framawork based on four main social goals – stability, inequality, need, safety (SINS) – which the market mechanism fail to achieve: they are the market’s SINS. We propose a theoretical framework which is based on the...

The aim of this paper is to explain why a low and declining saving rate should be a problem in a world of free capital flows and increasing wealth. In Italy consumer households’ saving have been the main driver of economic stability and growth, funding investments and public debt, and despite...

Better nutrition and comfortable housing are complements in the capability space: however, for the poor and low-income families food and housing can be substitutes in the commodity space. We take Engel law to implement a simple food-based measure of absolute poverty in a developed country,...

We specify a VEC model based on six main macroeconomic imbalances to explain the Great European Recession, in Germany, France, Spain and Italy, from 1999 to 2013, estimating their long-term relationships. We focus on employment and unemployment as the main imbalances and identify consumption and...

The aim of the paper is to unbundle the main economic variables involved in the European Crisis and clarify their reciprocal relationship. The variable considered are: unemployment, inflation, consumptions, investments and current accounts. We use annual, quarterly and monthly data, until 2012,...

We construct a detailed dataset, base on National Accounts, from 1991 to 2012, and the Bank of Italy survey on households in 2010, to measure the global tax burden on households consumer in Italy, distinguishing between direct, indirect taxes and social contributions. Global tax burden is...