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What Determines Earnings and Employment Risk?

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Expectations and riskiness of future earnings are crucial determinants of individuals’ intertemporal choices. Yet, the empirical literature lacks reliable measures of the distribution of future income. Lacking direct observability, the latter is usually estimated inferring moments of the distribution from income realizations on panel data. In this paper we rely instead on subjective expectations available in the 1995 Survey of Household Income and Wealth, a large random sample representative of Italian households. The survey elicits information on the distribution of future earnings and the probability of employment in a very simple and parsimonious way. Based on the responses, we estimate the individual distributions of expected earnings conditional on working as well as unconditional. We can then relate various moments of these distributions to demographic and economic variables observable in the cross-section.

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  • Luigi Guiso & Tullio Jappelli & Luigi Pistaferri, 1998. "What Determines Earnings and Employment Risk?," CSEF Working Papers 08, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    • Handle: RePEc:sef:csefwp:08
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    1. Caballero, Ricardo J., 1990. "Consumption puzzles and precautionary savings," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 113-136, January.
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    Cited by:

    1. Arie Kapteyn & Constantijn Panis, 2003. "The Size and Composition of Wealth Holdings in the United States, Italy, and the Netherlands," NBER Working Papers 10182, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Luigi Guiso & Tullio Jappelli, 2000. "Household Portfolios in Italy," CSEF Working Papers 43, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.

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    Keywords

    Subjective expectations; income risk; unemployment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth

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