Nicola Rossi

University of Rome Tor Vergata | UNIROMA2 · Dipartimento di Economia e Istituzioni

We would like to thank Massimo Baldini, Patrizia Battilani, and Giulio Righi for excellent assistance in assembling and organizing the data. Financial support from the Italian National Research Council (Grant no. 91.04064.CT10) is gratefully acknowledged.

The paper provides a general theoretical framework that allows a comparison and a possible reconciliation of error correction models of consumers’behaviour and the life cycle hypothesis under rational expectations. It is suggested that by relaxing the assumption of intertemporally strongly separable and homothetic preferences, a generalization of H...

We investigate secular changes in the distribution of personal expenditure in Italy. To this end we present a new data set, consisting of 4,370 family-level budgets scattered over the years 1881 1961. Our methodology is innovative for this kind of study. Italy s secular trend proves to have been egalitarian, and to have accelerated in periods of fa...

This paper discusses, estimates and formally compares the best known procedures for incorporating demographic variables into complete demand systems. In particular, a class of general procedures belonging to Gorman's family of 'general linear household technologies' is introduced. Estimation and comparison of different procedures make use of Italia...

This paper investigates secular changes in the distribution of personal expen-diture in Italy over the period 1881-1961. To do so, the authors constructed a new dataset, the Italian Household Budgets Database (IHBD), consisting of 4,370 family-level budgets. Methodologically, this paper improves upon most existing studies in that: (i) the entire di...

Changes in social security laws and regulations which took place in the late sixties and early seventies apparently weakened the link between contributions and benefits permitting a time path of aggregate consumption in excess of what would have occured in the absence of such changes. In this paper, these results are revised and extended and, if an...

We have recently suggested that net government transfers have substantially contributed to the decline of the aggregate Italian saving rate. Changes in social security laws and regulations which took place in the late 1960s and early 1970s apparently weakened the link between contributions and benefits permitting a time path of aggregate consumptio...

The evolution of private saving and its interaction with government fiscal policy play an important and complex role in the development of the national economy. To gain insight into this process, it is imperative that we improve our understanding of the savings behaviour of individual households and of the ways in which they aggregate over the enti...

The evolution of private saving and its interaction with government fiscal policy play an important and complex role in the development of the national economy. To gain insight into this process, it is imperative that we improve our understanding of the savings behaviour of individual households and of the ways in which they aggregate over the enti...

This paper analyzes the determinants of aggregate households' portfolio choices conditional on those components of wealth which can be regarded as highly or totally illiquid because of the existence of substantial transaction costs and/or institutional constraints on agents behaviour. The empirical analysis broadly confirms the importance of the ab...

Following years of control and regulation, there has been a massive trend towards the liberalisation of financial markets. This volume provides an analysis of this process and considers likely future developments. It is divided into three parts: the first covers the behaviour of households and firms; the second includes papers on stock, bond and cu...

"The discussion on the effects of the ongoing demographic transition on government behaviour has never mentioned its likely effect on an expenditure item (apparently non age specific) such as the debt service. This paper attempts to show that such effects could be non-negligible in countries (such as most European countries) where social security w...

In suggesting a programme of action to create a single, integrated internal market within the European Community, the European Commission’s 1985 White Paper has paved the way for far-reaching changes in the structure and rates of indirect taxation (value added tax and excise duties on alcohol, tobacco and mineral oils) of EEC member states. These w...

Italy's economic performance between 1945 and 1992 is assessed in a general theoretical framework for productivity growth measurement which enables us to relax the binding assumptions of standard Solow-type neoclassical models. The paper shows that `true productivity' was of minor importance, being outweighted by economies of scale as a source of g...

Italy's economic performance between 1895 and 1947 is assessed in a general theoretical framework for productivity growth measurement, which enables the authors to relax the binding assumptions of traditional studies. The paper shows that 'true productivity' growth is of minor importance, being largely outweighed by economies of scale as a source o...

The composition of Italian household wealth has undergone significant changes in the last decade, partly reflecting the growth of public debt and monetary policies aimed at encouraging its absorption by the household sector. Within a theoretical framework consistent with the "money in the utility function" approach, this paper investigates househol...

This paper introduces budget share demographic translation in the Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS) and explores its implications for aggregation over consuming units. It os shown that, under certain conditions, the joint distribution of expenditure and demographic characteristics plays an explicit role in the aggregate AIDS. Empirical evidence, ba...

Empirical results establishing a firm empirical relationship between dependency rates and savings behavior in developing countries are still lacking. Two demographic extensions of the representative household's stochastic dynamic optimization problem are presented. The relationship between expected dependency rates and consumption growth is shown t...

Empirical evidence on the deeterminants of private saving in 49 developing countries over the period 1973-83 indicates that, as predicted by theory, a positive relationship exists between the rate of growth of consumption and the expected real interest rate. The strength of that relatioship, how-ever, is such that increases in the real rate of retu...

On the assumption that the natural root of dynamics lies in the intertemporal dimension of the optimization process and that an operational and meaningful solution has to be found by appropriately placing restrictions on preferences, this paper develops and tests on U.K. 1952-81 data a dynamic demand system exploiting W. M. Gorman's concept of quas...

Frisch's (1959) conjecture on the behavior of the income elasticity of the marginal utility of income is tested by means of regional Italian data. Results offer some support to the empirical validity of the conjecture.

This paper makes use of the differential approach to the theory of the multiproduct firm in order to empirically analyze input demand and product supply in Italian agriculture. Estimation of the parameters of the model with annual (1961–80) data for a sector model of fourteen products and three factors of production suggests possibilities for farme...

The aim of this paper is to summarise and review the principal results of our investigations of the aggregate consumption function in Italy. It is based on work undertaken at the Bank of Italy. These studies began in 1974, and deal systematically with issues that have been of interest to theorists in recent years, and in particular the permanent in...

The purpose of this paper is to model the dynamics of consumers' response to changes in the relevant variables. Wealth and inflation effects on aggregate consumption expenditure are investigated. Real capital losses (or gains) due to inflation are accounted for in providing a more appropriate definition of income in a situation of rising prices. Em...

Thesis (doctoral)--London School of Economics and Political Science, 1984.