Giovanni D'Alessio

Banca d'Italia · Economic Research and International Relations

The paper provides an overview of the main statistics produced by the Bank of Italy: financial accounts, monetary statistics, balance of payments, household and business surveys. The volume discusses the problems related to the measurement of economic phenomena, how statistics can be used for policy evaluation, the challenges for official statistic...

The paper analyses the results of the Survey on the Financial Literacy of Italian Adults, conducted by the Bank of Italy in early 2020. In line with the OECD’s methodology, the financial literacy indicator is the sum of the scores calculated for three factors: knowledge, behaviour and attitudes. The survey confirms that Italy lags behind by interna...

This paper firstly provides simple tools for evaluating the incidence of measurement error affecting the main variables collected in surveys on consumption. The assessment is carried out on two surveys that provide both diary and panel data. Diary data can be employed to obtain reliability coefficients for time-invariant variables. When variables v...

The paper shows the opinions on taxes of Italian citizens based on data gathered in four different national surveys between 1992 and 2013. Through a Principal Component Analysis, the study constructs a synthetic indicator of the propensity to evade, examining its intensity across various social groups and its evolution over time. The results show t...

The paper analyses the results of the survey on the financial literacy of Italian adults, conducted by the Bank of Italy in January and February. This is part of an OECD project, which has created a harmonized questionnaire used by 26 countries. The Italian sample comprises 2,000 adults. In line with the OECD's methodology, the financial literacy i...

The paper analyses the results of the Survey on the Financial Literacy of Italian Adults, conducted by the Bank of Italy in early 2020. In line with the OECD’s methodology, the financial literacy indicator is the sum of the scores calculated for three factors: knowledge, behaviour and attitudes. The survey confirms that Italy lags behind by interna...

Durante la pandemia di COVID-19 la Banca d'Italia ha assicurato la piena continuità della produzione statistica, intervenendo sulle forme di rilevazione, sui metodi e sulle fonti impiegati per le stime, e ha aumentato l'offerta di dati per far fronte alle nuove esigenze informative. Lo shock innescato dalla pandemia suggerisce di accelerare i proce...

I provide a comparative study of the most frequently used poverty indices, obtained by modifying the welfare indicator (income, consumption, income and/or wealth), the equivalence scale (OECD or square root of the number of components), local deflators and the statistic for the poverty threshold (average or median). I also examine the Equivalent Ec...

Il lavoro esamina comparativamente alcune varianti degli indici di povertà utilizzate con maggiore frequenza in letteratura, ottenute modificando l’indicatore di benessere esaminato (reddito, consumi, o reddito/patrimonio), la scala di equivalenza (OCSE o radice quadrata del numero dei componenti), la correzione o meno dei prezzi per area geografic...

This paper makes a comparative study of some variants of the most frequently used poverty indices, obtained by modifying the welfare indicator (income, consumption, or income/assets), the equivalence scale (OECD or square root of the number of components), the local price adjustment index and the statistic used for identifying the poverty threshold...

Il lavoro esamina sia la persistenza intergenerazionale delle condizioni economiche familiari in termini di istruzione, reddito e ricchezza, sia l’importanza delle condizioni di partenza nello spiegare il successo degli italiani. I risultati collocano l’Italia nel novero dei paesi con una persistenza intergenerazionale delle condizioni economiche r...

he paper examines the intergenerational persistence of economic conditions in terms of education, income and wealth, and the importance of starting conditions in explaining success in Italy. The intergenerational persistence of economic conditions turns out to be relatively high by international standards; in recent years this phenomenon has displa...

The financial crisis of 2007-08 has highlighted the need for using granular data on financial institutions and markets to detect risks and imbalances in the financial sector. Data producers such as central banks and national statistical institutes are witnessing a growing need to improve granular-data access and sharing. When making granular data a...

L 'articolo esamina la persistenza intergenerazionale delle condizioni economiche in termini di reddito e ricchezza in Italia, l'importanza delle condizioni di partenza e il ruolo delle eredità. I risultati collocano il nostro paese tra quelli con una persistenza intergenerazionale delle condizioni economiche relativamente alta; in anni recenti que...

This paper provides a reconstruction of the joint distribution of Italian households’ income and wealth in the years ranging from 1968 to 1975. Exploiting the information available in some historical reports recently published by the Bank of Italy, the paper reconstructs synthetic microdata compatible with the aggregate results of sample surveys ca...

The paper, using data from the Bank of Italy’s Survey of Household Income and Wealth, estimates the intrahousehold distribution of wealth. On the basis of reconstructed data, a large gap between men and women emerges, greater for financial assets than for real assets and in particular for real estate. This gap, smaller among young people, increases...

Nel presente lavoro, utilizzando i dati raccolti nell’indagine sui bilanci delle famiglie italiane, si esaminano comparativamente le condizioni di benessere percepite dalle famiglie del Centro-Nord e meridionali, cercando di individuare i fattori in grado di spiegarne il divario. In particolare, viene esaminato il ruolo del livello dei prezzi nelle...

This paper firstly aims to evaluate the incidence of measurement error affecting the main variables collected in surveys on consumption. The assessment is carried out on two Tanzania surveys which provide both diary and panel data. Diary data can be employed to obtain reliability coefficients for time-invariant variables. When variables vary over t...

Wealth and wellbeing - Some good reasons for studying household wealth – What goes to define the wealth of Italians – The measurement challenge – The likely amount of the wealth of the Italians - The composition of wealth – The distribution of wealth – Wealth and GDP: a dangerous relationships – Tracing the origin of wealth – In the wealth trap? –...

Il lavoro descrive l’evoluzione dell’indagine sui bilanci delle famiglie dalla sua origine nei primi anni sessanta fino ad oggi, illustrando in che modo le innovazioni che si sono susseguite nel corso del tempo hanno consentito di migliorare la qualità dei dati raccolti e ampliare le possibilità di analisi. Il lavoro esamina inoltre estesamente in...

In this paper we examine the relation among socio-economic conditions, health, and mortality, making use of data from the Survey of Household Income and Wealth carried out by the Bank of Italy. The analysis is crucial not only from a demographic, sociological, and epidemiological point of view, but also at the economic level. The differential morta...

In questo lavoro si stima l’andamento dei prezzi delle case e quello dei terreni sottostanti dal 1927 al 2012. Al netto dell’inflazione, nel periodo in esame i prezzi delle case sono più che triplicati, mentre nelle grandi città sono quintuplicati. L’aumento risulta largamente superiore a quello dei costi di costruzione, che in termini reali sono p...

The purpose of this paper is to examine the measures of over-indebtedness proposed in the literature and to apply them to the Italian case from 2008 to 2014 by using the wide array of information available from the Bank of Italy’s survey on households. The numerous measures of over-indebtedness are critically analysed from both a cross-sectional an...

Nel lavoro si esamina la relazione tra le condizioni socio economiche, lo stato di salute e la mortalità, facendo ricorso ai dati dell’indagine sui bilanci delle famiglie italiane condotta dalla Banca d’Italia. L’approfondimento di queste relazioni è di interesse non solo sotto il profilo demografico, sociologico ed epidemiologico, ma anche sotto q...

In the Survey of Household Income and Wealth (SHIW) conducted by the Bank of Italy, the flow variables (income and consumption) refer to the year preceding the interview while the stock variables (household composition and net wealth) refer to the end of the year. However, there are some exceptions that may produce effects on the estimates but that...

The Bank of Italy’s Survey of Household Income and Wealth (SHIW) is widely used to study the economic behavior of Italian households. Like most similar surveys, the SHIW is biased downward in its estimates by the lesser propensity of wealthy families to participate and by the tendency to underreport income and wealth. This work assesses the various...

Non-sampling errors are a serious problem in household surveys. This paper exploits the Bank of Italy’s Survey on Household Income and Wealth to show how these issues can be studied and how the main effects on estimates can be accounted for. The topics examined are unit non-response, uncorrelated measurement errors and some specific cases of underr...

The last decade has seen significant increases in consumer indebtedness in western countries, causing concern about its economic and social impact. In particular, over-indebtedness is attracting attention from national and international authorities because of its potential effect on both the sustainability of households' indebtedness and the stabil...

Oltre il Pil: come cambiano le condizioni delle famiglie italiane? Il lavoro illustra l'evoluzione dei principali indicatori di benessere economico e di disuguaglianza in Italia dal secondo dopoguerra, mostrando che i progressi non sono stati uniformi nel tempo e tra le categorie di cittadini; fornisce inoltre alcuni spunti di riflessione sulla ade...

This paper describes the evolution of the main indicators of economic well-being and inequality in Italy from World War II onwards, showing that their dynamics differed across time periods and population subgroups. It also presents some reflections on the adequacy of per capita GDP as a measure of well-being. We argue that economic resources play a...

The paper describes first the evolution in total household wealth in Italy over the period 1965-2010 before addressing the analysis of wealth inequality. On the basis of reconstructed data, we show that household wealth inequality declined until the beginning of the 1990s. It then grew significantly during that decade, remaining at approximately th...

The growth in top incomes occurring in most Oecd countries as from the closing decades of the 20th century is by now well documented, while hard thinking in terms of evaluating the phenomenon appears overdue. Prompted by Franzini Ricchi e poveri. L’Italia e le disuguaglianze (in)accettabili (Egea, Università Bocconi, Milano, 2010), the following co...

Il lavoro illustra i tratti salienti della disuguaglianza in Italia. La prima parte contiene alcuni fatti stilizzati sul tema della disuguaglianza; considerata l'esigenza da più parti manifestata-si veda per esempio il Rapporto Stiglitz (Stiglitz, Sen e Fitoussi, 2009)-di estendere l'analisi della disuguaglianza ad altri aspetti della vita che non...

This paper presents the main findings of the Survey on Household Income and Wealth for the Italian region of Lombardy. To get a large enough sample, the observations on 2004, 2006, and 2008 were pooled. The work sets out the structural characteristics for Lombardy prior to the crisis, with special attention to comparison with other northern Italian...

Non-sampling errors are a serious problem in household surveys. This paper exploits the Bank of Italy’s Survey on Household Income and Wealth to show how these issues can be studied and how the main effects on estimates can be accounted for. The topics examined are unit non-response, uncorrelated measurement errors and some specific cases of underr...

Oggi in Italia si registra un benessere economico assai superiore al passato, nonostante la recente crisi economica. Ma rispetto a cinquant'anni fa gli italiani non sono molto più soddisfatti. Perché? Nel volume si analizza l'evoluzione delle condizioni di vita degli italiani dal dopoguerra a oggi, attraverso sia gli indicatori economici sia altre...

This paper is aimed at evaluating the incidence of measurement error in the Bank of Italy's Survey of Household Income and Wealth (SHIW). In the case of time-invariant variables, we assess the degree of inconsistency of answers given by panel households in subsequent survey waves. For quantities that vary with time, we estimate the incidence of mea...

The paper offers a broad overview of the topics addressed during the Bank of Italy's conference on Household wealth in Italy held in Perugia (Italy) in 2007. It recalls the principal reasons for central bank involvement in the compilation of statistics on wealth, looks at the Bank of Italy's experience in this specific field, provides a brief synop...

In this paper we examine the role of intergenerational transfers in the wealth accumulation of Italian households. Received transfers represent an important share of the net wealth held by households. Direct estimates referring to 2002 range from 30 to 55 per cent, depending on the inclusion of the income stream produced by transferred assets. This...

This paper analyses the impact of capital gains on the level and distribution of wealth held by Italian households between 1989 and 2005. The evaluation of these issues is achieved using both macro and micro data in order to obtain a more robust result. The estimation of capital gains through macro data is obtained using national accounts data whil...

This paper examines the relationship between inequality and happiness through the lens of heterogeneous values, beliefs and inclinations. Drawing upon opinion data from the European Social Survey for twenty-three countries, we find that individual views on a wide range of themes can be effectively summarized by two orthogonal dimensions: moderation...

In recent years, a vast literature has focused on thè mie played by economic variables in determining the perceived well-being of individuals. Analyses conducted so far show that economic aspects explain only a part of the variability in happiness: other profiles, such as health and family life, are more important. In this paper we want to ascertai...

During the last two decades, house prices in Italy have increased dramatically in real terms, particularly in large towns and cities; the rise in rents has been even more marked. This paper analyses home affordability for households, considering both the rent and the property markets. In particular, it looks at the trends in house prices, rents, ho...

In this paper we use data from the Bank of ItalyÂ’s Survey on Household Income and Wealth (SHIW) to study what Italian households think of tax evasion, and to estimate their propensity to evade taxes. This propensity turns out to be larger for the self-employed than for employees; within the group of employees, the propensity is higher for blue-col...

This paper examines the relationship between inequality and happiness through the lens of heterogeneous values, beliefs and inclinations. Drawing upon opinion data from the European Social Survey for twenty-three countries, we find that individual views on a wide range of themes can be effectively summarized by two orthogonal dimensions: moderation...

The contributors to this comprehensive book compile and analyse the latest data available on household wealth using, as case studies, the United States, Canada, Germany, Italy, Sweden, and Finland during the 1990s and into the twenty-first century. The authors show that in the US, trends are highlighted in terms of wealth holdings, among the low-in...

In Italia - che pure non tra i paesi con più elevata disuguaglianza - i 10 individui più ricchi posseggono più risorse economiche dei circa 3 milioni di individui più poveri. Molte sono le questioni di natura economica e politica che tale divario solleva. Quanta parte della ricchezza di un individuo deriva dal suo impegno e quanta invece frutto del...

Wealth variations at the household level can be measured using both macro data from National Accounts and micro data from sample surveys. As a contribution to the LWS project, which aims at the harmonisation of micro data on household wealth, we discuss a possible definition of wealth variation at the micro level. The starting point are the Nationa...

This paper describes the composition and distribution of household wealth in Italy. First, the evolution of household portfolios over the last 40 years is described on the basis of newly reconstructed aggregate balance sheets. Second, the characteristics and quality of the main statistical source on wealth distribution, the Bank of Italy’s Survey o...

Il lavoro si propone di valutare gli errori di misura delle principali variabili raccolte con l’indagine sui bilanci delle famiglie italiane. Lo studio assume rilievo in primo luogo per i ricercatori che utilizzano l’indagine, che devono tenere conto della qualità dei dati che essi sottopongono ad analisi. La più approfondita conoscenza dei problem...

Information from the Survey of Italian Household Income and Wealth (SHIW) is not normally used as a basis for regional estimates on account of the small sample size. This paper presents an experimental estimation of regional aggregates for the period 1995-2000, obtained by combining several surveys. The variability of estimates is reduced not only...

This paper aims to describe non-respondents in the Bank of Italy’s Survey of Household Income and Wealth (SHIW) and to measure the underestimation of income and wealth attributable to non-response. The evidence confirms that non-response is not random, since it is more frequent among wealthier households. Therefore exclusive use of post-stratificat...

This paper examines the effects of demographic structure on the evolution of inequality in Italy from 1977 to 1995, and on its inequality ranking relative to 11 of the other 14 European Union countries in the mid-1990s. The composition of Italian households was substantially different in 1995 both from that observed in the two preceding decades, an...

The paper compares income inequality of households and individuals. Obviously, the latter is greater than the former; in fact households operate a broad redistribution of resources both between earners and non earners (children, unemployed, housewives), and between earners of unequal income. This redistribution, which partially reflects the differe...

This paper explores the possibility of a multidimensional analysis of deprivation and inequality by adopting the specific theoretical perspective of the "capability approach" proposed by Amartya Sen. The purpose is to assess the operational content of the approach, i.e. the empirical methods to measure functionings and capabilities. Some critical p...

MPCA, an extension of the principal components approach to multi-table contexts, is used to examine the evolution of Italian regional labour markets in 1977 90, which in turn should reflect changes in the general pattern of regional development in the country. The conventional view of Italian economic geography identifies: (a) an industrial heartla...

Availability of data on the amount and composition of wealth is of signal importance in order to interpret the patterns of household consumption and savings in the light of a life-cycle theory or other interpretative schemas keyed to the source and destination of accumulated wealth and the significance of intergenerational transfers. More precise m...

Nel presente lavoro si effettua una ricostruzione della ricchezza reale e finanziaria delle famiglie nelle regioni italiane nel periodo 1991-2001. Il metodo è basato sulla disaggregazione a livello regionale di stime nazionali tratte, per le attività finanziarie, dai conti finanziari e, per le attività reali, da Brandolini, Cannari, D’Alessio e Fai...