Intergenerational Transfers in Italy

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 share has shown a tendency to increase over the last decade. In a lifetime perspective, the ratio of transfers received over the whole life span to the total amount of resources, both computed at the age of 15, is on average equal to 4.6 per cent, a significant share considering the size of the denominator. Transfers are very concentrated, more than income and wealth, even when considered in a lifetime perspective. Households receiving transfers show higher levels of lifetime income, consumption, net wealth and given transfers than non-recipient households. Richer households receive larger transfers but, as a proportion of their current wealth holdings, transfers are greater for poorer households than richer ones. These results cannot be interpreted as an equalising effect of transfers, because people tend to react to transfers, changing their saving and consumption behaviour. The correlation between transfers (received or expected over the whole life span) and lifetime income is positive. Again, richer households receive greater inheritances and other wealth transfers than poorer households; as a proportion of their lifetime income, transfers are greater for poorer households than richer ones. This result is likely to be due to the much more important role played by family background variables than bequests as factors of transmission of inequality of lifetime resources. Finally, we find a positive relationship between left-to-children bequests and received-from-parents inheritances; this relationship holds even after controlling for lifetime resources, suggesting the importance of the role of family traditions.Households, Wealth, Intergenerational transfers

Inequality and Happiness

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 and inclusiveness. The former is defined as a tendency to take mild stands on issues rather than extreme ones; the latter is defined as the degree of support for a social model that grants equal rights and opportunities to everyone who willingly subscribes to a shared set of rules, regardless of background and circumstances. These traits matter when it comes to how inequality affects subjective well-being; specifically, those who are either more moderate or more inclusive than their average compatriot tend to dislike inequality. With reference to moderation, inequality aversion can be read in terms of a desire for stability: people who are reluctant to take strong stands probably dislike conflict, tension and unrest, which normally accompany inequalities. With reference to inclusiveness, the main element at play is likely to be distress accruing to a perception of unfairness.Happiness, inequality, heterogeneity

Pre-main sequence stars with disks in the Eagle Nebula observed in scattered light

NGC6611 and its parental cloud, the Eagle Nebula (M16), are well-studied star-forming regions, thanks to their large content of both OB stars and stars with disks and the observed ongoing star formation. We identified 834 disk-bearing stars associated with the cloud, after detecting their excesses in NIR bands from J band to 8.0 micron. In this paper, we study in detail the nature of a subsample of disk-bearing stars that show peculiar characteristics. They appear older than the other members in the V vs. V-I diagram, and/or they have one or more IRAC colors at pure photospheric values, despite showing NIR excesses, when optical and infrared colors are compared. We confirm the membership of these stars to M16 by a spectroscopic analysis. The physical properties of these stars with disks are studied by comparing their spectral energy distributions (SEDs) with the SEDs predicted by models of T-Tauri stars with disks and envelopes. We show that the age of these stars estimated from the V vs. V-I diagram is unreliable since their V-I colors are altered by the light scattered by the disk into the line of sight. Only in a few cases their SEDs are compatible with models with excesses in V band caused by optical veiling. Candidate members with disks and photospheric IRAC colors are selected by the used NIR disk diagnostic, which is sensitive to moderate excesses, such as those produced by disks with low masses. In 1/3 of these cases, scattering of stellar flux by the disks can also be invoked. The photospheric light scattered by the disk grains into the line of sight can affect the derivation of physical parameters of ClassII stars from photometric optical and NIR data. Besides, the disks diagnostic we defined are useful for selecting stars with disks, even those with moderate excesses or whose optical colors are altered by veiling or photospheric scattered light.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&

Italian Household Wealth: Background, Main Results, Outlook

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 synopsis of the research to date and compares the new estimates with those previously available. The final section provides some thoughts on the future direction of the research.Households, Wealth, Saving

From quantum chaos and eigenstate thermalization to statistical mechanics and thermodynamics

This review gives a pedagogical introduction to the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH), its basis, and its implications to statistical mechanics and thermodynamics. In the first part, ETH is introduced as a natural extension of ideas from quantum chaos and random matrix theory (RMT). To this end, we present a brief overview of classical and quantum chaos, as well as RMT and some of its most important predictions. The latter include the statistics of energy levels, eigenstate components, and matrix elements of observables. Building on these, we introduce the ETH and show that it allows one to describe thermalization in isolated chaotic systems without invoking the notion of an external bath. We examine numerical evidence of eigenstate thermalization from studies of many-body lattice systems. We also introduce the concept of a quench as a means of taking isolated systems out of equilibrium, and discuss results of numerical experiments on quantum quenches. The second part of the review explores the implications of quantum chaos and ETH to thermodynamics. Basic thermodynamic relations are derived, including the second law of thermodynamics, the fundamental thermodynamic relation, fluctuation theorems, the fluctuation–dissipation relation, and the Einstein and Onsager relations. In particular, it is shown that quantum chaos allows one to prove these relations for individual Hamiltonian eigenstates and thus extend them to arbitrary stationary statistical ensembles. In some cases, it is possible to extend their regimes of applicability beyond the standard thermal equilibrium domain. We then show how one can use these relations to obtain nontrivial universal energy distributions in continuously driven systems. At the end of the review, we briefly discuss the relaxation dynamics and description after relaxation of integrable quantum systems, for which ETH is violated. We present results from numerical experiments and analytical studies of quantum quenches at integrability. We introduce the concept of the generalized Gibbs ensemble and discuss its connection with ideas of prethermalization in weakly interacting systems.This work was supported by the Army Research Office [grant number W911NF1410540] (L.D., A.P, and M.R.), the U.S.-Israel Binational Science Foundation [grant number 2010318] (Y.K. and A.P.), the Israel Science Foundation [grant number 1156/13] (Y.K.), the National Science Foundation [grant numbers DMR-1506340 (A.P.)and PHY-1318303 (M.R.)], the Air Force Office of Scientific Research [grant number FA9550-13-1-0039] (A.P.), and the Office of Naval Research [grant number N000141410540] (M.R.). The computations were performed in the Institute for CyberScience at Penn State. (W911NF1410540 - Army Research Office; 2010318 - U.S.-Israel Binational Science Foundation; 1156/13 - Israel Science Foundation; DMR-1506340 - National Science Foundation; PHY-1318303 - National Science Foundation; FA9550-13-1-0039 - Air Force Office of Scientific Research; N000141410540 - Office of Naval Research)Accepted manuscrip