1,720,993 research outputs found
What do we learn from recall consumption data?
No full textIn this paper, we use two complementary Italian data sources (the 1995 ISTAT and Bank of Italy household surveys) to generate household specific nondurable expenditure in the Bank of Italy sample that contains
relatively high-quality income data. We show that food expenditure data are of comparable quality and informational content across the two surveys, once we properly account for heaping, rounding, and time averaging.
We therefore depart from standard practice and rely on the estimation of an inverse Engel curve on ISTAT data to impute nondurable expenditure to Bank of Italy observations, and show how we can use these estimates to analyze consumption age profiles conditional on demographics. Our key result is that predictions based on a standard set of demographic and socioeconomic indicators are quite different from predictions that also condition on simulated food consumption, in the sense that their age profile is less in line with the implications of the standard consumer intertemporal optimization problem
Household Portfolio Risk
No full textWe exploit the US Survey of Consumer Finances from 1998 to 2010 to study households’ portfolio risk. We compare alternative measures of ex-ante risk, based on a financial portfolio including deposits, bonds and stocks, or a broader portfolio also including real estate, business wealth and related debt. The measures provide different rankings of portfolio risk, but they all show a skewed distribution with many households bearing limited risk. Large wealth holdings lead to more aggressive risk positions. Moreover, risk falls at the beginning of the sample peri-od and rises at the end, together with the business cycle
Return expectations and risk aversion heterogeneity in household portfolios
Full text linkWe develop a structural econometric model to elicit household-specific expectations about future financial asset returns and risk attitudes by using data on observed portfolio holdings and self-assessed willingness to bear financial risk. Our framework assumes that household portfolios are subject to short-selling constraints in stocks and bonds, and that financial investment decisions are taken conditional on real estate and business wealth. We derive an explicit solution for the model, and estimate its parameters using the US Survey of Consumer Finances from 1995 to 2013. The results show that our modified mean-variance model fits the data adequately, and that the demographic, occupational and educational characteristics of the investors are relevant in shaping risk aversion and return expectations. In contrast, wealth, income, and past market performance have limited impacts on expectations and risk aversion
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
Mean-Variance Econometric Analysis of Household Portfolios
No full textWe investigate households’ portfolio choice using a microeconometric approach derived from mean–variance optimization. We assume that households have heterogeneous expectations on the distribution of excess returns and that they cannot take short positions in risky assets. Assuming two such assets, we derive an explicit solution of the model characterized by four possible portfolio regimes, which are analyzed using two
structural probit and tobit specifications with three latent state variables. Both specifications are estimated by weighted maximum likelihood on a cross-section of US households drawn from the 2004 SCF. The tobit specification is simulated in order to evaluate the regressors’ effects on regime probabilities and asset
demands. We also assess to what extent the predicted state variables are consistent with the self-reported expected returns and risk aversion elicited from the SCF questionnaire
Alternative Weighting Structures for Multidimensional Poverty Assessment
Full text linkA multidimensional poverty assessment requires a weighting scheme to aggregate the well-being dimensions considered. We use Alkire and Foster’s (2011a) framework to discuss the channels through which a change of the weighting structure affects the outcomes of the analysis in terms of overall poverty assessment, its dimensional and subgroup decomposability and policy prescriptions. We exploit the Survey on Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe to evaluate how alternative weighting structures affect the measurement of poverty for the population of over 50s in ten European countries. Further, we show that in our empirical exercise the results based on hedonic weights estimated on the basis of life satisfaction self-assessments are robust to the presence of heterogeneous response styles across respondents
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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