<p>In this paper we investigate the size of the consumption drop at retirement in Italy. We use micro data on food and total non-durable household spending covering the period 1993-2004, and evaluate the change in consumption that accompanies retirement by exploiting the exogenous variability in...</p>

The life-cycle theory predicts that wealth should be fully annuitized to insure longevity risks. If annuity markets are incomplete and elderly individuals face other risks (notably, health risks) wealth holdings will include other financial and real assets. However, the life-cycle model under...

Standard tests of portfolio efficiency neglect the existence of illiquid wealth. The most important illiquid asset in household portfolios is housing: if housing stock adjustments are infrequent, optimal portfolios in periods of no adjustment are affected by housing price risk through a hedge...

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...

We use life history data covering households in thirteen European countries to analyse residential moves past age 50. We observe four types of moves: renting to owning, owning to renting, trading up or trading down for home-owners. We find that in the younger group (aged 50-64) trading up and...

The great recession is changing the way many people live and the way they perceive their prospects for the near and more distant future. Its longer term consequences will not be known for some time, but something can be learned from the effect on individuals and households who experienced...

We use life history data covering households in 13 European countries to analyse residential moves past the age of 50. We observe four types of moves: renting to owning, owning to renting, trading up or trading down for homeowners. We find that in the younger group (aged 50–64), trading up and...

The paper deals with the effects of cohabitation of grown children with their parents on household saving, using data from Italy and the Netherlands. It presents a twoperiod game-theoretical model where the child has to decide whether to move out of the parental home. This decision is affected...

In this paper, we use two complementary Italian data sources (the 1995 ISTAT and Bank of Italy household surveys) to generate householdspecific nondurable expenditure in the Bank of Italy sample that contains relatively high-quality income data. We show that food expenditure data are of...