Household Wealth and Resilience to Financial Shocks in Italy

Household Wealth and Resilience to Financial Shocks in Italy
Author: Daniel Garcia-Macia
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 26
Release: 2018-08-31
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1484374894

High household wealth is often cited as a key strength of the Italian economy. Both in absolute terms and relative to income, the Italian household sector is wealthier than most euro area peers. A sizable fraction of this wealth is held by the rich and upper middle classes. This paper documents the changes in the Italian household sector’s financial wealth over the past two decades, by constructing the matrix of bilateral financial sectoral exposures. Households became increasingly exposed to the financial sector, which in turn was exposed to the highly indebted real and government sectors. The paper then simulates different financial shocks to gauge the ability of the household sector to absorb losses. Simple illustrative calculations are presented for a fall in the value of government bonds as well as for bank bail-ins versus bailouts.

Italian Household Wealth in a Cross-Country Perspective

Italian Household Wealth in a Cross-Country Perspective
Author: Laura Bartiloro
Publisher:
Total Pages: 24
Release: 2012
Genre:
ISBN:

This paper provides a comparative analysis of household wealth in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, France, Germany, Spain and Italy, with a special focus on the latter. First, we compare national levels of debt and financial and real wealth. Second, we analyse the composition of financial wealth in more detail, by looking at the instruments in which households invest. Third, we discuss the empirical evidence on household indebtedness. In a nutshell, in Italy household financial assets are not as large as in the US, the UK or Japan, but are larger than in other European countries. This Italian position derives from the greater importance of securities other than shares and unquoted shares and other equity in the household portfolio, while insurance technical reserves are small by international standards. Italy also has a high ratio of real wealth to disposable income. Taking into account that their debt is low, Italian household have a high net wealth among the main OECD countries.

Italian Household Wealth

Italian Household Wealth
Author: Luigi Cannari
Publisher:
Total Pages: 18
Release: 2012
Genre:
ISBN:

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.

Saving and the Accumulation of Wealth

Saving and the Accumulation of Wealth
Author: Albert Ando
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 419
Release: 1994-03-25
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0521452082

Taking Italy as their field of research, the contributors conduct a coherent analysis of households' saving behaviour.

The Concentration of Personal Wealth in Italy 1995-2016

The Concentration of Personal Wealth in Italy 1995-2016
Author: Paolo Acciari
Publisher:
Total Pages: 80
Release: 2021
Genre: Equality
ISBN:

Italy is one the countries with the highest wealth-to-income ratio in the developed world. Yet, despite the growing policy interest, knowledge about the size distribution of wealth is currently limited. In this paper, we expand our windows of observation on the distribution of personal wealth using a novel source on the full record of inheritance tax files. The data cover up to 63% of the deceased population and are available between 1995 and 2016, a period of substantial economic turbulence and structural reform for the Italian economy. Our benchmark results rely on the distribution of the net wealth observed in the National Accounts balance sheets. Unlike available statistics estimated from household survey data, our results point to a strong rise in wealth concentration and inequality since the mid-1990s. Whereas the level of wealth concentration in Italy is in line with those of other European countries, its time trend appears more in line with the U.S. experience. Moreover, Italy stands out as one of the countries with the strongest decline in the wealth share of the bottom 50% of the adult population. We explore the role of household wealth portfolios, accumulation patterns during the life cycle, and inheritance flows, its concentration, and taxation patterns as main drivers of the trends observed. A range of alternative series of wealth concentration helps us better understand the role of adjustments and imputations and is based on a multi-series approach, i.e., comparing the pieces of information given by different and competing sources.

Italian Households' Saving and Wealth During the Crisis

Italian Households' Saving and Wealth During the Crisis
Author: Laura Bartiloro
Publisher:
Total Pages: 31
Release: 2013
Genre:
ISBN:

This paper investigates trends in Italian households' saving and wealth in the last twenty years, with a special emphasis on the period immediately following the financial crisis in 2008. The analysis is based on data from the Italian Survey on Household Income and Wealth (1991-2010. The crisis has intensified the trends already under way, as confirmed by the further decline in the saving rate and the deterioration in the financial situation of low-income households, young people and tenants. Overall inequality in wealth distribution has increased. Poverty indicators based on income and wealth summarize these developments: in 2010 nine per cent of Italian households were on a low income and in the event of job loss, had sufficient financial asset to survive at the poverty line for barely six months. This percentage increases to 15 per cent for young people and to 26 per cent for tenants.