Financial literacy and stock market participation

We have devised two special modules for De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) Household Survey to measure financial literacy and study its relationship to stock market participation. We find that the majority of respondents display basic financial knowledge and have some grasp of concepts such as interest compounding, inflation, and the time value of money. However, very few go beyond these basic concepts; many respondents do not know the difference between bonds and stocks, the relationship between bond prices and interest rates, and the basics of risk diversification. Most importantly, we find that financial literacy affects financial decision-making: Those with low literacy are much less likely to invest in stocks.     

Retrospective reserves for the insurances of the person in the framework of multistate models

Retrospective reserve is usually meant as the expected accumulated value at a given time of past premimums less benefits. With reference to multistate models, hoth the state of the policy at the time of valuation and its past story must be considered in calculating such expected value. Since it is unlikely that the retrospective reserve can be evaluated for any possible path of the risk, different definitious can be given according to the hypotheses on its story. In this paper we firstly examine the main definitions of retrospective reserve given in the framework of multistate models. Then, we formulate a new definition which generalizes that given in conventional life insurance mathematics. Comparisons among the various definitions are proposed in some examples which, inter alias, show the different behaviour and magnitude of such reserves.     

Time,cash and services: Reforms for a future sustainable long-term care

The elder care sector is at the core of a radical restructuring process as all the European countries strive to cope with demographic and social change. While current and prospective rapid population ageing is expected greatly to increase the demand for elder care services, financial constraints, social change and rising female employment all act as obstacles to the provision of an adequate supply of care labour.In their search for a financially sustainable response to these challenges the EU countries have brought in various reforms designed to mobilise resources and achieve more cost-efficient results. The paper presents an analysis of the main objectives of care reforms – making care affordable, favouring the creation of a care market, and making work pay – as well as their possible trade-offs. In fact, entailing as it does a larger role for the family, greater reliance on home care may clash with the goal of a higher female activity rate; good jobs and decent working conditions in the care sector may run counter to the principle of care affordability for the greatest possible numbers, while subsidising demand may conflict with public finance sustainability. These interactions, and the interdependence between the care market and the rest of the economy, are crucial factors that will need to be considered in order to ensure consistency between goals and policies.     

Lost and Found in Translation: How Firms Use Anisomorphism to Manage the Institutional Complexity of CSR

Prior research on the internationalization of firms from emerging countries has fruitfully invoked institutional theory to emphasize the legitimacy benefits that firms that obtain from showing isomorphism with international norms such as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Without denying the intuitive appeal for these firms to communicate acceptance of CSR, we suggest that firms face a legitimacy trade-off, where the hoped-for legitimacy benefits of isomorphism must be weighed against other home-country institutional considerations. We advance and test this notion that firms will navigate this institutional complexity by engaging in anisomorphism, i.e., espousing general acceptance with international values but with selective ‘translation’ based on home country differences. We test our predictions by analysing firms' communication of CSR, using a unique dataset comprised of 245 firms observed over the period from 2000 to 2018. Consistent with our predictions, we find that firms from countries more reliant on natural resource extraction (e.g., mining and fossil fuel industries) de-emphasize the environmental component of CSR, and firms from more autocratic countries de-emphasize the human rights component of CSR. Additionally, and consistent with our presumption of firms' weighing the international versus home-country legitimacy trade-off, we find that these main effects are sensitive to changes in firms' levels of internationalization.     

New data for understanding saving

During the last decade or so, several researchers have formulatedinnovative new survey questions, the answers to which aid ourunderstanding of individual savings decisions. This articlebriefly reviews a number of these innovations and how they areused in empirical research on saving. We pay attention to themeasurement of time discounting, expectations (about both economicvariables and longevity), bequest motives, health, and uncertainty.We illustrate the empirical usefulness of these new conceptsby means of a Dutch longitudinal savings survey, the CentERSavings Survey.     

The Asymmetric Impact of War: Resilience,Vulnerability and Implications for EU Policy

Intereconomics - In 2019, over 96% of EU27 oil needs, nearly 90% of natural gas and over 43% of solid fuels were met by net imports, with the largest share coming from Russia (35% of oil, 40% of...     

Exploring factors motivating entrepreneurial intentions: the case of Italian university students

This study aims to identify the factors motivating the intentions of university students to become entrepreneurs. Leveraging data from a survey of 941 Italian students and adopting Ajzen's theory of planned behaviour, this paper employs the structural equation model to identify factors explaining students’ entrepreneurial intentions. The findings show that attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control positively shape Italian students’ intentions. Moreover, the findings signal that the skills acquired during the university pathway play a crucial role in encouraging students to consider entrepreneurial choices. The paper extends and complements the academic and policy debate in the field of entrepreneurship offering a comprehensive investigation of the factors affecting entrepreneurial intentions. It also allows us to contend that higher education may have an important role to play in fostering the entrepreneurial intentions of young people. This is especially significant given current global economic conditions and the renewed importance of self‐employment strategies.     

U.S. community foundations: building a generous society in challenging times

Community foundations are nonprofit organizations promoting philanthropy for projects useful in a defined geographic area. This paper aims to highlight how U.S. community foundations are building a generous society with the engagement of multiple stakeholders. Our study analyses the marketing strategies of a sample of 100 of the largest U.S. community foundations in 2010 and 2013. A cluster analysis examines financial performance, average number of recipients, and related organizations to discover the level of philanthropic activities and relationships, revenue diversification, and the level of competition on the fundraising side.     

Does skilled migration reduce investment in human capital? An investigation on educational choices in Italian regions (2001–2016)

This paper investigates the effects of prospective migration on students’ investment in tertiary education. A simple theoretical model is presented in which individual educational choices, different across potential students because of heterogeneity in migration costs, are driven by expected returns and costs of tertiary education. In this framework, a larger probability of after-graduation migration is shown to affect educational choices by both reducing the rate of enrollment at home and favoring pre-graduation migration (i.e., enrollment at universities outside the residence region). The theoretical predictions are confirmed by the empirical investigation carried out on Italian interregional graduate migration in 2001–2016. In the lagging regions of Southern Italy, out-migration of students and graduates, and weak incentives to acquire tertiary education turn out to bring about depletion of local human capital.