Francesco Pattarin

Psychological determinants of consumer credit: the role of attitudes

Purpose - Consumer credit as a proportion of household debt has grown considerably during the last 20 years across many developed countries. A fairly extensive literature from the field of empirical psychology has provided evidence that personality factors and attitudes may influence individuals’ debt financing decisions. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the importance of attitude to credit and three main research questions are addressed. Is there any relationship between attitude and use of consumer credit? Are there any differences between the attitudes of credit users and non-users that can be associated with motivations for using consumer credit? Does attitude towards credit affect preferences for the financing of consumption? Design/methodology/approach - The authors provide answers based on the results of an original survey of the use of consumer credit conducted on a wide sample of Italian households, which allowed the authors to asses the respondents’ attitudes towards credit and to examine them with respect to credit decisions, controlling for several socio-economic variables. Findings - The findings indicate that the influence of attitude on consumer credit decisions cannot be ruled out. Attitude toward credit appears to play an important role and is significantly related to motivations for using credit and to the method of choice for financing consumption. Originality/value - This study improves on most existing research on these topics in the particularly large size and scope of the sample, and also because several studies from the psychological field lack a thorough assessment of household economic conditions and expectations.

Unemployment Duration: An Analysis of Incomplete, Completed, and Multiple Spells in Emilia-Romagna

Sets of incomplete and completed spells of unemployment wereobtained from the Italian Quarterly Labour Force Survey,carried out by ISTAT in Emilia-Romagna (1993:1–1995:1).The data were analysed through a proportional hazards modelwith a Weibull specification of the baseline hazard, includingboth unobserved heterogeneity applied to the scale parameterof the duration distribution, and telescoping effect to accountfor spikes in the distribution of unemployment spells.They were compared formally also with a non-proportional hazardmodel based on a log-logistic distribution of duration.The estimation of the parameters was carried out separately on bothcompleted spells and quarterly incomplete spells to ascertaindifferences and to envisage the potential seasonal effect.The results showed that the shape parameters changed over time.The parameters of each covariate proved to be statisticallystable over time and were also equal to the parameters ofthe completed spells model.Therefore, the analysis of incomplete spells is fairly feasiblewhen an even (closed form) baseline hazard function is suitablefor data.

Can an unglamorous non-event affect prices? The role of newspapers

Abstract Our paper offers evidence that the print media can affect stock prices by covering public information. After price-to-book value figures of Italian listed shares were first published on the major national financial newspaper, the prices of value stocks did, on average, show a positive reaction. The price reaction was limited to small caps stocks and disappeared within three weeks. Over the period of analysis, we could not find any abnormal behaviour of the returns of small and value stocks on other European markets. These findings support the view that newspapers play a role in disseminating information to small investors and grabbing their attention, even if news are continuously realeased by faster and more sophisticated media.

M&As and Equity Risk in the EMU Financial Sector

Over the past decade mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in the financial sector have been very frequent. In Europe the pace of M&As has been rapid. This process has been driven by the consolidation of market-oriented policies in the EU member countries, as well as by the expansion of the common market environment and the introduction of the euro since 1999. The opening of new markets in former Communist countries has also played a prominent role.