Consumption responses to a large shock to financial wealth: evidence from Italy

We estimate marginal propensities to consume from wealth shocks for Italian households early in the Great Recession. Large asset-price shocks in 2007-2008 underpin instrumental variables. A euro fall in risky financial wealth resulted in cuts in annual total (non-durable) consumption of 8.5-9 (5.5-5.7) cents. We find small effects on food spending. Counterfactuals indicate financial-wealth effects were relatively important for consumption falls in Italy in 2007/08. The estimated effects are consistent with a simulated lifecycle model that captures the wealth shock. Also consistent with the model are findings of stronger wealth effects for agents who were pessimistic about stock returns

The question of institutionalization of the morality

Мораль обладает определенными качествами и характеристиками, одно из которых ее автономность. Вопрос о том, может ли мораль быть более эффективной для индивидуума, имей она характер института, интересен и неоднозначен.Morality has certain qualities and characteristics, one of which is autonomy. The question of whether morality is to be more effective for the individual, if it is the nature of the institution, interesting and ambiguous

CMS physics technical design report : Addendum on high density QCD with heavy ions

Peer reviewe

Expenditure, Confidence, and Uncertainty: Identifying Shocks to Consumer Confidence Using Daily Data

The importance of consumer confidence in stimulating economic activity is a disputed issue in macroeconomics. Do changes in confidence represent autonomous fluctuations in optimism, independent of information on economic fundamentals, or are they a reflection of economic news? I study this question by using high-frequency microdata on spending and consumer confidence, and I find that consumer confidence contains information relevant to predicting spending, independent from other indicators. The exogenous movements in consumer confidence lead to very short fluctuations in consumer spending, consistent with the hypothesis that more consumer confidence reflects less uncertainty about the future