Papers by Guglielmo Weber
Journal of European Social Policy, 2009
Abstract The article examines the distribution of income and wealth among the generation of Europ... more Abstract The article examines the distribution of income and wealth among the generation of Europeans aged 65 and over, using data drawn from the first wave of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). It looks at how cross-country comparisons of income, wealth and debt are affected by differences in purchasing power, household size and taxation, and shows that some seemingly wide international differences appear less so when the proper adjustments are made. The article reveals wide differences in income, ...
The Journal of Human Resources, 2003
In this paper we use two complementary Italian data sources (the 1995 Istat and Bank of Italy hou... more In this paper we use two complementary Italian data sources (the 1995 Istat and Bank of Italy household surveys) to generate household-speci…c non-durable expenditure and savings measures 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 heaping, rounding and time averaging are properly accounted for. We therefore depart from standard practice and rely on structural estimation of an inverse Engel curve on Istat data to impute non-durable and total expenditure to Bank of Italy observations, and show how these estimates can be used to analyse saving and consumption age pro…les conditional on demographics.
Abstract We argue that health care quality has an important impact on economic inequality and on ... more Abstract We argue that health care quality has an important impact on economic inequality and on saving behavior. 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.
Abstract Until very recently, health information has been mostly absent from Italian surveys of h... more Abstract Until very recently, health information has been mostly absent from Italian surveys of household budgets and economic conditions. Interest in the association between health outcomes, economic resources and labor market conditions has led us to fill the gap with new microeconomic data. The product of this collective effort is the Survey on Health, Aging and Wealth (SHAW). The survey was commissioned to DOXA, a leading Italian polling agency with considerable experience in the field.
American Economic Review, 2009
Journal of Econometrics, 1993
By Carlo Carraro, Franco Peracchi and Guglielmo Weber; Editors' introduction: The econometri... more By Carlo Carraro, Franco Peracchi and Guglielmo Weber; Editors' introduction: The econometrics of panels and pseudo panels.
American Economic Review, 2009
We argue that health care quality has an important impact on economic inequality and on saving be... more We 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 ...
Advances in Life Course Research, 2013
In most European countries life insurance has played a key role in household portfolios, to the e... more In most European countries life insurance has played a key role in household portfolios, to the extent that it has often been the first asset ever purchased. In this paper we use life history data from a host of European countries to investigate the role of life insurance investment in shaping individuals' attitudes towards participation in stocks and mutual funds. We show that individuals who purchased a life insurance policy are more likely to invest in stocks and mutual funds later. On the one hand, these findings support the notion that life insurance policies play an educational role in financial investment. On the other hand, they are also consistent with behavioural models where economic agents are first concerned with avoiding unacceptable adverse scenarios by purchasing low risk investments, such as life insurance policies, and then invest in riskier assets, such as stocks and mutual funds, to obtain higher economic returns.
Longer-term Consequences of the Great Recession on the Lives of Europeans, 2014
In this paper we investigate the size of the consumption drop at retirement in Italy. We use micr... more In this paper we investigate the size of the consumption drop at retirement in Italy. We use micro data on food, non-durable and total household spending covering the period 1991-2002, and evaluate the change in consumption that accompanies retirement by exploiting the exogenous variability in pension eligibility to correct for the endogenous nature of the retirement decision. We take a
The Individual and the Welfare State, 2011
Until very recently, health information has been mostly absent from Italian surveys of household ... more Until very recently, health information has been mostly absent from Italian surveys of household budgets and economic conditions. Interest in the association between health outcomes, economic resources and labor market conditions has led us to fill the gap with new microeconomic data. The product of this collective effort is the Survey on Health, Aging and Wealth (SHAW). The survey was commissioned to DOXA, a leading Italian polling agency with considerable experience in the field. The questionnaire is patterned after the US Health and Retirement Survey and the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) project, and covers a range of matters bearing on the relations between health and wealth, aging and wealth, health and retirement. The population sampled is representative of the Italian population over 50. Some of the questions refer to the household (for instance, assets). Others are posed to all 2627 household members. More detailed questions on health status, job outcomes and expectations of future events are asked only to the respondent and spouse, 1765 individuals in total (1068 heads and 697 spouses). These characteristics of the survey make SHAW a unique source for studying the relation between socioeconomic status, health outcomes and health care utilization ♦
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Papers by Guglielmo Weber