Modelling Private Wealth Accumulation and Spend-down in the Italian Microsimulation Model CAPP_DYN: A Life-Cycle Approach

In microsimulation literature a limited number of models include a module aimed at analyzing and projecting the evolution of privat e wealth over time. However, this issue appears crucial in order to comprehensively evaluate the li kely distributional effects of institutional reforms adopted to cope with population ageing. In this work we describe the implementation in the Italian dynamic micro simulation model CAPP_DYN of a new module in which households\u2019 savings and asset allocation are modelled. In parti cular, we aim to account for possible behavioural responses to pension reforms in househo ld savings. To this end, we rely on an approximate life cycle structural framework for est imating saving behaviour, while adopting a traditional stochastic micro simulation approach fo r asset allocation. In line with Ando and Nicoletti Altimari (2004), we emphasize the role of lifetime economic resources in households\u2019 consumption decisions, yet we further account for i nternal habit formation and subjective expectations on pension outcomes in the econometric stage. In addition, we model intergenerational transfers of private wealth in a probabilistic fashio

The Introduction of a Private Wealth Module in CAPP_DYN: an Overview

Household saving rate in Italy declined over the last two decades.This trend still persists despite three pension reforms have been enacted since the beginning of the nineties. In this paper we search further evidence of general macroeconomic effects through the analysis of households behaviour. In the first part of the paper we use data from five surveys of the Bank of Italy Surveys of Household Income and Wealth (SHIW) to estimate the lifetime profiles of saving and wealth accumulation. Estimates show that the age profile of the propensity to save has been influenced more by cohort effects than by general trend effects; whereas the age profile of the ratios of financial assets to disposable income has been subject to relevant trend effects. In the second part of the paper we analyse the effects of pension reforms on saving behaviour of Italian Households. Firstly we use a difference-in-difference estimator in order to test whether the groups more severely hit by the reforms actually increased their saving rate relative to the other groups. Then we estimate the Social Security Net Wealth (SSWN) for each individual in the SHIW in the analysed period (1989-2000). Finally we estimate the substitution coefficient between SSWN and private wealth taking into account that the reaction of saving to a change in SSWN depends also on age of the individual. Our results show that the reduction of SSWN is unequally distributed across individuals. The cut is stronger for self employed, young workers and women. Most of the groups more severely hit by the reforms did not increase their saving rate relative to the control group: younger households, in particular, did not increase the saving rate. On the whole a reduction of one Euro in SSWN seems to induce, on the average, a compensating increase in private wealth by about fifty cents. The substitution coefficient between private and social security wealth is higher for the richest and oldest part of the sample. Finally when we split the sample observations by year we find that the more dramatised is the impact of the reform, the higher is the substitution coefficient.Pension reform; household saving; social security wealth; difference-in-difference

Modelling Private Wealth Accumulation and Spend-down in the Italian Microsimulation Model CAPP_DYN: A Life-Cycle Approach

In microsimulation literature a limited number of models are provided with a module aimed at analyzing and projecting the evolution of private wealth over time. However, this issue appears crucial in order to get a comprehensive evaluation of the likely distributional effects of institutional reforms adopted to cope with population ageing. In this work we describe the implementation in the Italian dynamic micro simulation model CAPP_DYN of a new module in which household’s savings and asset allocation are modelled. In particular, our efforts are addressed at accounting for some possible behavioural responses to pension reforms in household savings. To this end, we rely on an approximate life cycle structural framework for estimating saving behaviour, while adopting the traditional stochastic micro simulation approach for assets allocation. In line with Ando and Nicoletti Altimari (2004), we emphasize the role of lifetime economic resources in households’ consumption decisions, yet we further account for internal habit formation and subjective expectations on pension outcomes in the econometric stage. In addition, we model intergenerational transfers of private wealth in a probabilistic fashion. Despite possible saving responses to pension reforms, simulated results for the period 2008-2050 suggest a rising dispersion in saving propensity and intergenerational transfers received are largely responsible for the predicted increase in disposable income inequality in the next decades which, differently from the recent past, will also affect the group of elderly.household consumption, habit formation, pension expectations, social security, intergenerational transfers, income and wealth distribution, microsimulation

Regressivity reducing VAT reforms

A concern about a more extensive use of the Value Added Tax (VAT) in national tax systems often arises both from its impact on aggregate consumption and its alleged regressivity over income. Yet, the empirical evidence on this latter issue is still narrow mainly due to the lack of joint data on income and expenditures with enough detail to account for commodity-specific tax rates. After discussing relevant problems in the measurement of VAT incidence over current income – which are likely to cause severe upward bias in the estimated regressivity – the paper aixsms at analysing the distributional implications of different VAT structures. In a framework of marginal tax reforms, relying on the concept of Gini elasticity (Yitzhaki, 1983), a general methodology is proposed to analyse and improve the distributional profile of VAT over income. Using a static microsimulation model (EGaLiTe), the methodology is applied on a comprehensive dataset of expenditures and incomes obtained by a statistical matching of two different sources representative of the Italian population. It is shown that an alternative allocation of goods among existing rates could mitigate the regressive profile of the tax over income, and that a properly designed two-rate setting could even improve the distributional outcome compared with the current setting. Finally, behavioural responses to tax-driven price changes are also simulated in order to assess the potential impact of the proposed reforms on aggregate expenditures

Data Fusion Between Bank of Italy-SHIW and ISTAT-HBS

The aim of this work is to match household consumption information from Indagine sui Consumi delle Famiglie (Household Budget Survey, HBS) by the Italian National Statistical Institute (ISTAT) with Indagine sui Bilanci delle Famiglie Italiane (Survey of Households’ Income and Wealth, SHIW) by the Bank of Italy. In particular, we combine information from the Historical Database (integrated with information from the original cross sectional files) of SHIW 2010 with the wave 2010 of HBS. The work offers a review of the main matching methodologies, coupled with a discussion of the underlying hypotheses (such as the CIA) which, in our case, are less demanding to assume given the presence of aggregate consumption as common variable between the two surveys. Moreover, some tests measuring the validity of the matching procedure are presented in order to check the preservation of joint distributions. The resulting sample provides an integrated synthetic dataset which allows to jointly analyze income, wealth and consumption distributions with a high degree of detail for both incomes/assets and consumption expenditure items. This source is expected to allow better multidimensional-distributional analyses on consumption income and wealth and to provide a basis for an integrated microsimulation analysis of direct, indirect and wealth tax reforms which, so far, has not been feasible taking available sample surveys separately

Data Fusion Between Bank of Italy-SHIW and ISTAT-HBS

The aim of this work is to match household consumption information from Indagine sui Consumi delle Famiglie (Household Budget Survey, HBS) by the Italian National Statistical Institute (ISTAT) with Indagine sui Bilanci delle Famiglie Italiane (Survey of Households’ Income and Wealth, SHIW) by the Bank of Italy. In particular, we combine information from the Historical Database (integrated with information from the original cross sectional files) of SHIW 2010 with the wave 2010 of HBS. The work offers a review of the main matching methodologies, coupled with a discussion of the underlying hypotheses (such as the CIA) which, in our case, are less demanding to assume given the presence of aggregate consumption as common variable between the two surveys. Moreover, some tests measuring the validity of the matching procedure are presented in order to check the preservation of joint distributions. The resulting sample provides an integrated synthetic dataset which allows to jointly analyze income, wealth and consumption distributions with a high degree of detail for both incomes/assets and consumption expenditure items. This source is expected to allow better multidimensional-distributional analyses on consumption income and wealth and to provide a basis for an integrated microsimulation analysis of direct, indirect and wealth tax reforms which, so far, has not been feasible taking available sample surveys separately

Nonischemic left ventricular scar and cardiac sudden death in the young

Nonischemic Left Ventricular Scar (NLVS) is a pattern of myocardial injury characterized by midventricular and/or subepicardial gadolinium hyper enhancement at cardiac magnetic resonance, in absence of significant coronary artery disease. We aimed to evaluate the prevalence of NLVS in juvenile sudden cardiac death and to ascertain its aetiology at autopsy. We examined 281 consecutive cases of sudden death of subjects aged 1 to 35 years of age. NLVS was defined as a thin, grey rim of subepicardial and/or midmyocardial scar in the left ventricular free wall and/or the septum, in absence of significant stenosis of coronary arteries. NLVS was the most frequent finding (25%) in sudden deaths occurring during sports. Myocardial scar was localized most frequently within the left ventricular posterior wall, and affected the subepicardial myocardium, often extending to the midventricular layer. On histology it consisted of fibrous or fibro-adipose tissue. Right ventricular involvement was always present. Patchy lymphocytic infiltrates were frequent. Genetic and molecular analyses clarified the aetiology of NLVS in a subset of cases. ECG recordings were available in over half of subjects. The most frequent abnormality was the presence of low QRS voltages (< 0,5 mV) in limb leads. In serial ECG tracings, the decrease in QRS voltages appeared, in some way progressive. NLVS is the most frequent morphologic substrate of juvenile cardiac sudden death in sports. It can be suspected based on ECG findings. Autopsy study and clinical screening of family members are required to differentiate between Arrhythmogenic Right Ventricular Cardiomyopathy/Dysplasia and chronic acquired myocarditis

An experimental and modeling combined approach in preparative Hydrophobic Interaction Chromatography

Chromatography is a technique widely used in the purification of biopharmaceuticals, and gener-ally consists of several chromatographic steps. In this work, Hydrophobic Interaction Chroma-tography (HIC) is investigated as a polishing step for the purification of therapeutic proteins. Ad-sorption mechanisms in hydrophobic interaction chromatography are still not completely clear and a limited amount of published data is available. In addition to new data on adsorption isotherms for some proteins (obtained both by high-throughput and frontal analysis method), and a comparison of different models proposed in the literature, two different approaches are compared in this work to investigate HIC. The predictive approach exploits an in-house code that simulates the behavior of the component in the column using the model parameters found from the fitting of experimental data. The estimation approach, on the other hand, exploits commercial software in which the model parameters are found by the fitting of a few experimental chromatograms. The two approaches are validated on some bind-elute runs: the predictive approach is very informative, but the experi-mental effort needed is high; the estimation approach is more effective, but the knowledge gained is lower. The second approach is also applied to an in-development industrial purification process and successfully resulted in predicting the behavior of the system, allowing for optimization with a reduction in the time and amount of sample needed

Freeze-drying modeling and monitoring using a new neuro-evolutive technique

This paper is focused on the design of a black-box model for the process of freeze-drying of pharmaceuticals. A new methodology based on a self-adaptive differential evolution scheme is combined with a back-propagation algorithm, as local search method, for the simultaneous structural and parametric optimization of the model represented by a neural network. Using the model of the freeze-drying process, both the temperature and the residual ice content in the product vs. time can be determine off-line, given the values of the operating conditions (the temperature of the heating shelf and the pressure in the drying chamber). This makes possible to understand if the maximum temperature allowed by the product is trespassed and when the sublimation drying is complete, thus providing a valuable tool for recipe design and optimization. Besides, the black box model can be applied to monitor the freeze-drying process: in this case, the measurement of product temperature is used as input variable of the neural network in order to provide in-line estimation of the state of the product (temperature and residual amount of ice). Various examples are presented and discussed, thus pointing out the strength of the too

Impaired mitochondrial biogenesis is a common feature to myocardial hypertrophy and end-stage ischemic heart failure

Mitochondrial (mt) DNA depletion and oxidative mtDNA damage have been implicated in the process of pathological cardiac remodeling. Whether these features are present in the early phase of maladaptive cardiac remodeling, that is, during compensated cardiac hypertrophy, is still unknown. We compared the morphologic and molecular features of mt biogenesis and markers of oxidative stress in human heart from adult subjects with compensated hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and heart failure. We have shown that mtDNA depletion is a constant feature of both conditions. A quantitative loss of mtDNA content was associated with significant down-regulation of selected modulators of mt biogenesis and decreased expression of proteins involved in mtDNA maintenance. Interestingly, mtDNA depletion characterized also the end-stage phase of cardiomyopathies due to a primary mtDNA defect. Oxidative stress damage was detected only in failing myocardium