1,721,047 research outputs found
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.
Energy affordability and the benefits system in Italy
No full textIn this paper, we discuss a number of ways to define and measure the affordability of energy consumption, and we examine the emergence of energy poverty in Italy in the period from 1998 to 2011. The paper examines the eligibility criteria for claiming the benefits available to support energy consumption for vulnerable families and it identifies the potential beneficiaries. The study assesses the appropriateness of the eligibility criteria by comparing the population targeted by the policy with the population actually facing affordability problems. A simulation exercise, using the hypothetical scenario most likely to result in energy benefits being made available, shows that, regardless of the affordability index adopted, the provision of state energy benefits has little impact on fuel poverty
Energy benefits to vulnerable consumers: the eligibility criterion
No full textGovernment subsidies to energy are widespread and represent a heavy burden on public budgets in many countries. Both producers and consumers may be subsidized; the most common subsidies are for motor fuel consumption and electricity production and consumption. The subsidies to consumers often prove particularly harmful because they result in increased energy consumption, increased carbon emissions, and distortionary effects on consumer behavior
LA POVERTÀ ENERGETICA E LA SFIDA DI UNA TRANSIZIONE ENERGETICA GIUSTA
Full text linkNel presente Quaderno, concentrandoci in particolare sulla situazione dei paesi ad alto reddito,
presentiamo innanzitutto i principali elementi che descrivono il processo di ‘transizione giusta’,
ossia una transizione che corregga le sue potenziali distorsioni distributive (Sezione 2).
Illustriamo poi le principali cause della povertà energetica (Sezione 3); presentiamo quindi i
principali approcci per misurare la povertà energetica e la stima relativa al 2020 dell’Osservatorio Italiano sulla Povertà Energetica – OIPE per l’Italia (Sezione 4). Alcune brevi considerazioni
concludono il contributo (Sezione 5)
Restructuring Italian Utility Markets: Household Distributional Effects
Full text linkCompetition in public utility sectors has been encouraged in recent years throughout Europe. In this paper we try and analyse the welfare effects of these reforms in Italy, with particular attention to water and energy goods. The first step is to introduce a sensible measure of affordability of public utilities and to see how many households fall below a critical threshold. This issue is analysed stressing how climatic conditions dramatically affect households’ expenditure and how the affordability of utility bills varies a lot from region to region. So far, utilities’ reforms do not seem to have produced negative effects on the weaker group of households.Consumer behaviour, Public utilities, Regulation, Gas, Electricity, Water
The Estimation of Reaction Functions under Tax Competition
No full textTax competition has long been studied using panel models. According to this approach, each country’s tax rate is assumed to depend on a weighted average of the tax rates applied in the rest of the world, where weights are exogenous. As a consequence, the estimated reaction functions of countries throughout the world have the same sign. This means that all tax rates are either strategic complements or strategic substitutes. Moreover, the intensity of a country’s reaction depends on certain exogenous weights, with a unique proportional factor common across all countries. Our article departs from this standard approach and proposes a VAR model as an alternative estimation strategy. Accordingly, weights are no longer determined exogenously but rather endogenously. As such, we compare and explore the implications of the panel versus the VAR model in terms of structural contemporaneous parameters and impulse response functions. We show that results obtained with a VAR model differ from those obtained from a panel approach. In particular, we find that strategic complementarity between certain countries (with a positive slope of reaction functions) may co-exist with strategic substitutability between other countries (negative slope). Given these results, we can say that a standard panel approach is relatively restrictive and therefore can lead to unreliable estimates, and fail to provide helpful policy recommendations
Il confronto europeo sulle misure di PE
Full text linkLa Sezione 1.2, si apre con una breve presentazione degli indicatori di PE - consensuali e basati sulla spesa - adottati nei diversi paesi EU e dei dataset disponibili per la loro implementazione; vengono confrontati i risultati, anche alla luce delle evidenze da altre due misure - la soglia del 10% e l’indice Faiella-Lavecchia (2015) - e discussa la multidimensionalità del fenomeno
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
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