This paper seeks to assess the role of expectations on pension income and financial literacy in the decision of joining a pension fund, using a large household survey for Italy. The results confirm past evidence on the role of income and education, and find a strong role played by financial...

Prices of many consumables differ substantially across the European Union(EU) due to natural segmentation and to the survival of residual man-made barriers. However, we do not know much about the direction and the cause of deviations among countries diamp;#64256;ering mainly in size and income of...

If an economy runs a current account (CA) deficit and finances it via a corresponding net inflow of equity capital, the external debt (ED) does not change, i.e.: the CA deficit does not add to ED. This is no paradox. It simply comes from the definition of CA deficit and ED and points to...

The twelve Central and Eastern European Countries, which either joined the European Union in May 2004 or are scheduled to do so as early as 2007 , often show high current accounts deficit, which are sometimes close or even beyond those values common wisdom and past experience associate with a...

Population ageing in Italy is more pronounced than in most of the other advanced countries. Given the very low employment rate for older workers, this is likely to have a negative effect on overall labour force participation in the near future. This paper describes the demographic and labour...

The purpose of this paper is to test the dependency of domestic investment on domestic saving in the Feldstein-Horioka spirit. Our innovation is to use a de nition of investment that does not include foreign direct investment. We do so since FDI should not be considered in the intertemporal...