In this paper we focus on the recent restructuring of the Italian pension system and in particular on the reforms concerning the tax-favored retirement saving accounts. These reforms issued in the early and mid- 1990s reduced the riskiness of private retirement saving plans and their overall...

Using Italian household data we jointly estimate the yearly cost of participating to the stock market and the cross sectional distribution of optimism about excess returns of stocks over bonds. Using mean-variance analysis we derive individual efficient portfolio allocation rules, as functions...