1,721,153 research outputs found
Efficient Portfolios when Housing Needs Change over the Life-Cycle
Full text linkWe 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 the sum of a standard Markowitz portfolio and a housing risk hedge term that multiplies net housing wealth. Our empirical results show that net housing plays a key role in determining which household portfolios are inefficient. The largest proportion of inefficient portfolios obtains among those with positive net housing, who should invest more in stocks.Housing and portfolio choice, Portfolio efficiency, Rental risk, Life-cycle.
Internet use during the pandemic
Full text linkThe COVID-19 outbreak changed several aspects of our everyday lives. During the
widespread lockdowns, the internet came to play a crucial role, as many activities
that used to be carried out in person had to be moved online, including working,
shopping, accessing services, and talking to family and friends.
While information technology helped to mitigate the negative consequences
of the outbreak for the general population; for the elderly population, the use of
the internet represented a challenge. According to data from Eurostat (2021), in-
ternet use is less popular among the older than the younger generations: before
the COVID-19 outbreak, 98% of individuals aged 16–24 used the internet, com-
pared to 61% of individuals aged 65–74. However, this figure varied across the EU
member states. The countries with the highest shares of individuals aged 65–74
using the internet were Denmark (94%), followed by Luxemburg and Sweden
(91%); while the countries with the lowest shares of individuals aged 65–74 using
the internet were Bulgaria (25%) and Croatia (28%)
Is there a retirement consumption puzzle in Italy?
Full text linkIn this paper we investigate the way consumption changes around retirement in Italy. Using micro data covering the 1985-96 period, we find that consumption age patterns are similar to those found in the US and other developed countries, despite the much more wide-spread cohabitation of different generations. We also document the existence of a one-off drop in consumption at retirement of the household head, as in the UK and the US, and find that consumption of work-related goods falls around retirement age and home production of food and other goods increases. Given that we can provide evidence that Italian households who retired over the sample period knew reasonably well what their pension income would be, the only reason why forward looking consumers should reduce spending around retirement is because of their increased consumption of leisure. We do find evidence that the abrupt falls in total non-durable consumption at retirement disappear when leisure is taken into account, in agreement with the predictions of the life-cycle theory. This finding is robust to the way consumption is attributed to different household members, and to exclusion of non-nuclear households from the analysis.
Effects of COVID-19-related economic support on household financial distress
Full text linkThe COVID‐19 pandemic had a major impact on people’s lives, changing the socialbehaviours and the economic conditions of most individuals. These changes weremainly due to the pandemic-related restrictions implemented by governments tolimit the spread of the virus, such as social distancing requirements, mask man-dates, mobility restrictions, and even lockdowns.The effects of these COVID-19-related measures had heterogeneous economiceffects on the population, depending on people’s job type and job sector, their edu-cation, and other factors
Health Care Quality and Economic Inequality
Full text linkWe 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 and precautionary saving. We find that in lower quality districts there is greater income and health dispersion and higher precautionary saving. The analysis carries important insights for the ongoing debate about the validity of the life-cycle model and interesting policy implications for the design of health care systems.
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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