Exploiting three earthquakes in Italy as quasi-experiments, we analyze the response of homeowners’ consumption to transfers targeted to finance housing repair and reconstruction. To the extent that funds are made available up-front, these transfers are akin to loans, mainly affecting the...

Using a dynamic factor model, we uncover four main empirical or international comovements in a long-run panel of real and nominal variables. First, the countribution of world comovements to domestic output growth has decreased over the post-WWII period. The contribution of regional comovements,...