A nonlinear programming formulation is introduced to solve infinite horizon dynamic programming problems. This extends the linear approach to dynamic programming by using ideas from approximation theory to avoid inefficient discretization. Our numerical results show that this nonlinear...

This paper compares two indicators of household vulnerability using the Bank of Italy's Survey on Household Income and Wealth (2008-2014). According to the first indicator, a household is considered vulnerable if its debt service-to-income ratio exceeds 30 per cent and its income is below the...

Since 2015 consumer loans have been rising fast in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. Credit demand, specifically for consumer durables, has played a crucial role; the easing of supply conditions has been relevant only in Italy and Spain, which experienced stronger credit tightening during the...

We study the effect of bank capital on the supply of mortgages. We fully control for endogenous matching between borrowers, loan contracts, and banks by submitting randomized mortgage applications to the major online mortgage broker in Italy. We find that: higher bank capital is associated with...