What can we learn about correlations from multinomial probit estimates?

It is well known that, in a multinomial probit, only the covariance matrix of the location and scale normalized utilities are identified. In this note, we explore the relation between these identifiable parameters and the original elements of the covariance matrix, to find out what can be learnt about the correlations between the stochastic components of the non-normalized utilities.

Opt Out or Top Up? Voluntary Healthcare Insurance and the Public vs. Private Substitution

We investigate whether people enrolled into voluntary health insurance (VHI) substitute public consumption with private (opt out) or just enlarge their private consumption, without reducing reliance upon public provisions (top up). We study the case of Italy, where a mixed insurance system is in place. To this purpose, we specify a joint model for public and private specialist visits counts, and allow for different degrees of endogenous supplementary insurance coverage, looking at the insurance coverage as driven by a trinomial choice process. We disentangle the effect of income and wealth by going through two channels: the direct impact on the demand for healthcare and that due to selection into VHI. We find evidence of opting out: richer and wealthier individuals consume more private services and concomitantly reduce those services publicly provided through selection into for-profit VHI. These results imply that the market for VHI eases the redistribution from high income (doubly insured) individuals to low income (not doubly insured) ones operated by the Italian National Health Service (NHS). Accounting for VHI endogeneity in the joint model of the two counts is crucial to this conclusion.public provision of private goods, health insurance, bivariate count data model, endogenous multinomial treatment, simultaneous equation modeling

Is there a retirement consumption puzzle in Italy?

In this paper we investigate the way consumption changes around retirement in Italy. Using micro data covering the 1985-96 period, we find that consumption age patterns are similar to those found in the US and other developed countries, despite the much more wide-spread cohabitation of different generations. We also document the existence of a one-off drop in consumption at retirement of the household head, as in the UK and the US, and find that consumption of work-related goods falls around retirement age and home production of food and other goods increases. Given that we can provide evidence that Italian households who retired over the sample period knew reasonably well what their pension income would be, the only reason why forward looking consumers should reduce spending around retirement is because of their increased consumption of leisure. We do find evidence that the abrupt falls in total non-durable consumption at retirement disappear when leisure is taken into account, in agreement with the predictions of the life-cycle theory. This finding is robust to the way consumption is attributed to different household members, and to exclusion of non-nuclear households from the analysis.

Children and Parents Time Use: Empirical Evidence on Investment in Human Capital in France, Italy and Germany

We analyze a mechanism that has been disregarded in the literature on parental investment in children, as little attention has been devoted to the choices made by children themselves. We model directly time use by youngsters into activities related to the acquisition of human capital, considering not just the decision on study time, but also on socialization/networking at young age, which can enhance personal interaction skills. We provide new empirical evidence for three European countries (France, Italy and Germany) on the link between time allocation by parents and time allocation by youngsters, highlighting country-specific patterns as well as cross-country differences. We run fractional regression models and double hurdle models on multi-member household micro data on time use. Countries diverge concerning the association between parents and youngsters allocation of time to socializing and to reading and studying activities, with Italy standing out as the country where that association, in particular between youngster and mother, is strongest. Our results are consistent with different mechanisms: parental role model directly influencing children behavior, intergenerational transmission of preferences, or network effects, as individuals adapt their behavior to social patterns.study time, socializing, networking, youth, intergenerational transmission of preferences, fractional regression models, double hurdle models

Women's employment, children and transition: an empirical analysis on Poland

The effect of transition from centrally planned to market economies on female employment is unclear a-priori. Many studies have pointed out that the emergence of labour markets created obstacles to but also new opportunities for women’s employment. A frequently mentioned potential explanation of the lower female participation during the transition period is represented by the reduction of childcare facilities, which created a major constraint on the participation of women with dependent children. However, we must not forget the effect of forces of opposite sign, first of all the household necessity of having two earners during the turbulent transition period. The aim of this paper is to give an empirical assessment on how the transition to a market economy affected the relationship between motherhood and labour force outcomes in Poland. We estimate random effects probit models on two PACO panel datasets covering a four year period before the reform (1987-1990) and a three year period afterwards (1994-1996). Our findings indicate that during transition small children were much less of a deterrent to the employment probability of their mother than it was before transition

Opt out or Top up? Voluntary Healthcare Insurance and the Public vs. Private Substitution

We investigate whether people enrolled into voluntary health insurance (VHI) substitute public consumption with private (opt out) or just enlarge their private consumption, without reducing reliance upon public provisions (top up). We study the case of Italy, where a mixed insurance system is in place. To this purpose, we specify a joint model for public and private specialist visits counts, and allow for different degrees of endogenous supplementary insurance coverage, looking at the insurance coverage as driven by a trinomial choice process. We disentangle the effect of income and wealth by going through two channels: the direct impact on the demand for healthcare and that due to selection into VHI. We find evidence of opting out: richer and wealthier individuals consume more private services and concomitantly reduce those services publicly provided through selection into for-profit VHI. These results imply that the market for VHI eases the redistribution from high income (doubly insured) individuals to low income (not doubly insured) ones operated by the Italian National Health Service (NHS). Accounting for VHI endogeneity in the joint model of the two counts is crucial to this conclusion

On Intergenerational Transmission of Reading Habits in Italy: Is a Good Example the Best Sermon?

The intergenerational transmission of preference and attitudes has been less investigated in the literature than the intergenerational transmission of education and income. Using the Italian Time Use Survey (2002-2003) conducted by ISTAT, we analyse the intergenerational transmission of reading habits: are children more likely to allocate time to studying and reading when they observe their parents doing the same activity? The intergeneration transmission of attitudes towards studying and reading can be explained by both cultural and educational transmission from parents to children and by imitating behaviours. The latter channel is of particular interest, since it entails a direct influence parents may have on child's preference formation through their role model, and it opens the scope for active policies aimed at promoting good parents' behaviours. We follow two fundamental approaches to estimation: a "long run" model, consisting of OLS intergenerational type regressions for the reading habit, and "short run" household fixed effect models, where we aim at identifying the impact of the role model exerted by parents, exploiting different exposure of sibling to parents' example within the same household. Our long run results show that children are more likely to read and study when they live with parents that are used to read. Mothers seem to be more important than fathers in this type of intergenerational transmission. Moreover, the short run analysis shows that there is an imitation effect: in the day of the survey children are more likely to read after they saw either the mother or the father reading.intergenerational transmission of preferences; parental role model; imitation; household fixed effects

Public vs. private health care services demand in Italy

In this paper we use data coming from the new Italian Survey on Health Ageing and Wealth (SHAW) to analyse physician services utilization in Italy explicitly acknowledging the existence of two different classes of providers: public and private. We consider visits by a specialist physician as the measure of individual services utilization. In particular we assess the relative importance of variables like income, education, private insurance and supply characteristics as determinants of the utilization of such services, while controlling for individual health and need. We do that by estimating some alternative count data regression models of which we discuss the relative advantages and disadvantages and the entailed different interpretation of the results

Style of practice and assortative mating: a recursive probit analysis of cesarean section scheduling in Italy

We study practice variation in scheduling of cesarean section delivery across public and private hospitals in Italy. Adopting a novel perspective, we look at the role played by patients’ preferences for the treatment. The recursive probit model is revisited as a useful tool to assess the presence of assortative mating of patients and provider driven by style of practice. According to our evidence the propensity to scheduling a cesarean section is codetermined with patient self-sorting into hospital types. We measure a significantly higher inclination to practice cesarean section scheduling in private hospitals and conclude that assortative mating is of minor relevance in our case, even if we cannot exclude it to be presen

Joint decisions on household membership and human capital accumulation of youths: The role of expected earnings and labour market rationing

This paper focuses on the youth’s decisions on household formation and human capital investment - in further education or work experience - and the factors influencing these choices. While previous studies limited their analyses to decisions concerning the living arrangements and the labour market, the choice set is extended here to take into account other alternatives. The decisions of either remaining in the parental household or going to live with a partner are modelled jointly with those of either entering the labour market (i.e. investing in work experience) or investing in higher (university) education. Using the Bank of Italy 1995 Sample Survey on Italian Households, a multinomial probit model estimates the probabilities of the different pairs of outcomes. The results highlight the crucial role of economic variables in shaping young adults’ decisions. Among these, expected lifetime earnings from attending university have the most important impact on the choice of studying and coresiding. Implications for policy stem from the estimated impact of housing and labour market performance variables on young adults’ decisions. In particular, a sizeable discouraged worker effect, inducing young people to study when the local unemployment rate is high, is detected. The effect of the cost of housing in delaying young workers’ decisions to leave the parental home and form a new household is also remarkable. Two policy experiments are presented. The former measures the impact of housing policies targeted at reducing housing cost on the probability of marriage. The latter measures the extent to which labour policies targeted at reducing youth unemployment would decrease the number of discouraged workers that choose to study