Uruguay implemented an ambitious financial inclusion program that included a fiscal stimulus through VAT rebates and subsidies for point of sale (POS) adoption. One of its main provisions banned cash payment of wages and social benefits and forced financial institutions to open wage-accounts...

Digital payments have increasingly been adopted by consumers and firms in Latin America and the Caribbean. This policy research paper analyzes recent post-pandemic data on digital payments in the region to describe adoption patterns, measure adoption gaps, and identify adoption barriers. The...

Using the data on maintenance expenditures and self-assessed house value, I separate the measure of individual housing stock and house prices, and use these data for testing whether nondurable consumption and housing are characterized by intratemporal nonseparability in households’...

Access to reliable energy is central to improvements in living standards and is a Sustainable Development Goal. This study moves beyond counting the electrified households and examines the effect of the hours of electricity households receives on their welfare. We hypothesize that additional...

There is growing interest in discrete-choice experiment (DCE) as a method to elicit consumers' preferences in the health care sector. Increasingly this method is used to determine willingness to pay (WTP) for health-related goods. However, its external validity in the health care domain has not...

This paper focuses on the formation of inflation expectations of consumers in 9 Central, Eastern and Southeastern European (CESEE) countries. Using data from the OeNB Euro Survey, a large cross-country consumer survey, we show that the difference between realized inflation and reported inflation...

We investigate whether climate activism favors pro-environmental consumption by examining the impact of Fridays for Future (FFF) protests in Italy on second-hand automobile transactions in the strike-affected areas. Leveraging data on 10 million automobile transactions occurring before and after...

We investigate whether climate activism favors pro-environmental consumption by examining the impact of Fridays for Future (FFF) protests in Italy on second-hand automobile sales in rally-affected areas. Leveraging data on 10 million automobile transactions occurring before and after FFF...

This study analyzes how the willingness to pay (WTP) for a risk reduction for traffic accidents varies depending on the specific traffic safety measures and whether they are framed as public or private goods. Building on previous studies, we designed and conducted a contingent valuation survey...

The security of natural gas supply is an important issue for all EU countries due to the region's heavy dependence on imported supply sources and in light of energy demand for gas that is continuously increasing. Discussions have emphasised strategies for securing the supply at the macro level,...