We use a new measure of cognitive decline that is highly predictive of the onset of dementia and can be computed in standard surveys where recall memory tests are administered to the same individuals over the years. Using SHARE data, we investigate the association between cognitive decline and...

Using data from SHARE (Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe), we analyze the effect of having a voluntary health insurance policy (VPHI) on out-of-pocket (OOP) health spending for individuals aged 50 or more in a host of European countries. We control for self selection into VPHI...

We argue that health care quality has an important impact on economic inequality and on saving behaviour. We exploit district-wide variability in health care quality provided by the Italian universal public health system to identify the effect of quality on income inequality, health inequality...

We address the issue of the efficiency of household portfolios in the presence of housing risk. We treat housing stock as an asset and rents as a stochastic liability stream: over the life-cycle, households can be short or long in their net housing position. Efficient financial portfolios are...

In this paper we argue that standard tests of portfolio efficiency are biased because they neglect the existence of illiquid wealth. In the case of household portfolios, the most important illiquid asset is housing: if housing stock adjustments are costly and therefore infrequent, we show how...

The "Retired Husband Syndrome", that affects the mental health of wives of retired men around the world, has been anecdotally documented but never formally investigated. We use Japanese micro data and the exogenous variation generated by the 2006 revision of the Japanese Elderly Employment...

We use data from a nationally representative survey of Italian graduates to study whether Alma Mater matters for employment and earnings three years after graduation. We find that the attended college matters, and that there are important college related differences, both among and within...

Does the peer effect vary with the field of study? Using data from a middle-sized public university located in Southern Italy and exploiting the random assignment of first year students to college accommodation, we find that roommate peer effects for freshmen enrolled in the Hard Sciences are...

In a multisector economy with unionized labor markets, the interdependence of union wage claims - typical of industrial bargaining - affects the relationship between tax progressivity and wage pressure, which varies in a nonlinear fashion with the nature of the wage bargain, and can be...

I use the cross-country and time variation in the demographic structure of 11 European countries to study how changes in cohort size affect real earnings in Europe. This is an important question in the light of widespread population ageing. I find that cohort size has a negative and...