Inflation inequality in Italy

Inflation is usually assumed to affect all households with the same intensity. Since relative prices are subject to continuous changes, each household, depending on its specific pattern of consumption, is however characterised by a specific inflation rate. With the help of a rich set of microdata, this paper studies the distribution of inflation rates across Italian households during the period 1986-2004. The main findings are that rich households faced on average a slightly higher inflation rate than poor households, and that some demographic characteristics have been systematically associated with higher price increases. Also in 2002, the year of the changeover, inflation has been slightly higher for the rich. Using individual prices indexes, it is finally possible to show that, in the last few years, real living standards for many families have worsened.

The recent reforms of the Italian personal income tax: distributive and efficiency effects

The aim of this paper is the study of three reforms of the Italian personal income tax that have been implemented over the past six years. The analysis is carried out in three stages. In the first stage we study their distributive effects using a static microsimulation model. In the second stage we focus on the labour supply effects by means of a structural microeconometric model of household labour supply; finally, we analyze the distributive effects of the reforms accounting for labour supply reactions. Our findings confirm that the extension of the no-tax area had positive effects in terms of both redistribution and work incentives, while greater benefits for households with children improved income distribution but with negative effects on the labour supply of married women,microsimulation; labour supply; income distribution; income tax

Alternative approaches to Long Term Care financing. Distributive implications and sustainability for Italy.

In the last decade, many countries have adopted tax schemes specifically aimed at financing programs for Long Term Care (LTC). These mechanisms have important distributional implications both within and across generations. Given the process of demographic ageing, the issue of inter and intra-generational fairness is deeply linked with the problem of the long-term financial equilibrium of an LTC fund. In this paper we first compare, on a microdata sample of the Italian population, the distributive effects (both on current income and across generations) of six alternative approaches to finance an LTC scheme. In particular, we consider a hypothetical LTC scheme (with a size equivalent to that of the German one) to be introduced in Italy and analyse the distributive implications of some tax options, taken from the financing mechanisms implemented or under discussion in Germany, Luxembourg, Japan and Italy.In the second part of the paper we move from a static to a dynamic perspective: we study the long-term sustainability of an hypothetical Pay as You Go (Payg) LTC scheme operating in Italy (that is, assuming the Italian projected demographic trends) under scenarios that consider alternative indexation rules, growth rates of GNP, future incidence of disability among age groups.long term care; distributive effects; tax-benefit model; intertemporal sustainability; trust fund

Housing policy toward the rental sector in Italy: a distributive assessment

We study the distributive effects on Italian households of the three most relevant housing subsidies targeted to renters: a national rent supplement scheme introduced in the context of the reform that liberalised the rental market in the late 1990s, a tax credit for renters that has been recently strengthened, and the implicit economic support given to tenants in the social housing sector, through below-market rents. The analysis is performed on data from the Eu-Silc survey for Italy and, in the case of the housing allowances, also on register data from some of the largest Italian towns. We consider in particular the ability of these schemes to target low income households and their effects on the overall levels of poverty and inequality. Results from our analysis show a good targeting but very limited effect on social protection, with the partial exception of social housing.housing policy, housing benefits, social housing, tax credit, poverty, Italy.

Long-run and short-run constraints in the access to private health care services: evidence from selected european countries

This paper aims at distinguishing long-run and short-run constraints in the access to private health care services. To this end, we apply the methodology proposed by Carneiro and Heckman (2003) to the SHARE database, a survey conducted in a number of European countries, involving some 22,000 individuals over the age of 50. Micro-data includes information on health and health consumption, and socioeconomic variables (like income and wealth). Our results show that the problem of short-run constraints in the access to private health care services could be real, especially in Italy, Greece, and to some extent Spain. Moreover, there appear to be differences in the role of credit constraints, both considering more specific services, and gender differences.health inequalities, private health care services, credit constraints, family background

Ethnic discrimination in the Italian rental housing market

With a field experiment carried out on the Internet, this paper studies the presence of discrimination in the Italian rental housing market against persons whose names are distinctive of different ethnic groups and gender. Further, we investigate whether providing information on the job or personal characteristics of the applicant may reduce the extent of discrimination. We also study if sending ill-formed emails negatively affects immigrants’ chances of success in receiving a positive response. We created twelve fictitious individuals: four with Italian-sounding names, four with typical Arab/Muslim names and four with East European-sounding names. We made these individuals send emails to apply for vacant rental apartments in 41 Italian cities. The results provide a multifaceted picture. The degree of discrimination varies across ethnic groups, genders and the level of information, but seems to be present only in part of the country, and is also closely correlated with the size of the flat. Perfect mastery of the receiving-country’s language does not play an important role.

Housing policy toward the rental sector in Italy: a distributive assessment

We study the distributive effects on Italian households of the three most relevant housing subsidies targeted to renters: a national rent supplement scheme introduced in the context of the reform that liberalised the rental market in the late 1990s, a tax credit for renters that has been recently strengthened, and the implicit economic support given to tenants in the social housing sector, through below-market rents. The analysis is performed on data from the Eu-Silc survey for Italy and, in the case of the housing allowances, also on register data from some of the largest Italian towns. We consider in particular the ability of these schemes to target low income households and their effects on the overall levels of poverty and inequality. Results from our analysis show a good targeting but very limited effect on social protection, with the partial exception of social housing.housing policy; housing benefits; social housing; tax credit; poverty; Italy

Transizione demografica e formazione del risparmio delle famiglie italiane.

This paper studies the relationship between population ageing and saving formation by Italian households. We use five cross-sectional budget surveys to separately construct the age and cohort profiles of the saving rate. After detrending the data, we isolate the age and cohort effects on saving. Cohort effects show that, in the current Italian population, saving behaviour is markedly different across generations. The estimates obtained on survey data are then used to derive a forecast of the medium and long run tendency of the household saving rate (2000-2050). In the absence of any changes in the saving behaviour of young cohorts, the saving rate falls by 15% at the end of the period. The recent reforms of the pension system could induce the young to increase their saving, but the available empirical evidence leads to a scenario where the effects of the pension reform on the incentive to save and accumulate are low, and may be neutralised by the mechanism of intergenerational transfers. Even in a scenario where the young actually react to the pension reform, the reduction in total household wealth at the end of the life-cycle leads to a decrease in aggregate household saving

Study on the impacts of fiscal devaluation. Final report

The main research question of the project is summarized as: What are the macroeconomic and distributional consequences of fiscal devaluation for a selection of countries and the EU as a whole? The selected countries are France, Italy, Spain and Austria. The project aims to perform four tasks: 1. Provide a review of the impacts of fiscal devaluations in the light of economic literature and former studies. 2. Use suitable models to analyse macroeconomic impacts of fiscal devaluation in the selected countries and do a comparative analysis of the results obtained in different countries. 3. Analyse distributional impact of fiscal devaluations with the help of models in the selected countries and link these results, if possible, to the macro-level analysis. 4. Analyse the suitability of the policy for the EU as a whole with the help of model simulations and in the light of the country-specific results

Flat tax: european experiences and the Italian proposal

The paper discusses the flat tax, intended as a potential comprehensive reform of personal income tax. After a presentation of the broad characteristics of the flat tax model, we extensively describe the applications of this model that have taken place so far in some countries and its impact on financial and economic indicators. The last part of the paper focuses on the Italian case, assessing the possible distributional effects of the application on Italian households\u2019 incomes of some recently presented flat tax reform proposals