Ask Me Differently, I Expect Differently: Survey Framing and Inflation Expectations (with Anna Conte), under review
This paper studies how the wording and format of survey questions shape measured inflation expectations during a period of exceptionally high inflation. Using a randomised experiment, embedded in the 2022 Italian Survey of Household Income and Wealth (SHIW), we compare open-ended questions with guided-choice options using an interval regression framework that jointly models point and interval-valued responses without arbitrary harmonisation. We find that question format substantially alters the level but not the dispersion of reported inflation expectations: open-ended responses yield markedly higher average expectations. These results remain robust after controlling for a comprehensive set of socio-demographic and psychographic characteristics. Our results show that the choice of survey instrument is not methodologically neutral: it can lead to systematic over or underestimate of expectations, with direct implications for monetary policy communication and households' economic decisions.
Green is the New Black: Bridging Climate Awareness and Sustainable Investing (with Anna Conte and Gianmarco De Santis), under review
Climate change poses significant risks to well-being, the economy, and the financial system. Given the financial system’s crucial role in allocating resources within the economy, transitioning to a climate-neutral economy will demand substantial financing. Sustainable investments are therefore essential for supporting environmental initiatives. However, if climate change awareness is decoupled from sustainable finance, this could pose a challenge in mobilizing the necessary capital. Using data from the Survey on Financial Literacy and Digital Financial Skills in Italy: Young Adults conducted by the Bank of Italy in 2023, this paper examines how climate change awareness and various types of literacy influence young adults' preferences for Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) products. Our findings highlight the need for policy interventions that integrate climate and environmental consciousness with sustainable investment strategies.
Corporate philanthropy, social incentives and leadership by example (with Edward Cartwright and Michalis Drouvelis), under review
Corporate philanthropy has been frequently used as a tool to motivate behaviour in modern organisations. Using a large sample of subjects from an online experiment (N = 2,376), we study the impact of social incentives on leading-by-example in two separate studies. Study 1 considers treatments where leaders and followers are exogenously assigned to donate 0%, 20% or 40% of their income from a group project to charity. We find that the introduction of social incentives leads to a non-monotonic increase in contributions to the project for both leaders and followers. Study 2 examines behaviour in endogenous treatments where the assigned leaders choose the proportion of project income donated to charity. We show that social incentives increase contribution behaviour in a monotonic way. Consonant with previous literature, we find that part of our observed social incentive effects can be explained by shifts in beliefs.
Do Gender Differences and Behavioral Traits Matter in Financial Decision-Making? Insights from Experimental and Survey Data (with Giuseppe Attanasi, Simona Cicognani, and Maria Luigia Signore)
Several studies have observed systematic gender differences in decision-making across various contexts, including financial markets. This study explores the complex interplay between gender differences and financial investment decision-making within three distinct domains of uncertainty, encapsulated in three aggregate indices: EU consistency, risk aversion, and ambiguity aversion. Based on a sample of 1,178 students from different Italian and French universities, our research uniquely combines experimental and survey data to examine how individuals' behavioral traits influence their financial investment decisions, aiming to quantify the influence of gender differences. We find that gender alone cannot predict diverse financial behaviors unequivocally, emphasizing the need to consider contextual factors in decision-making. Furthermore, female investors consistently demonstrate a lower likelihood of engaging in financially risky activities across certain financial domains. These findings highlight the need for tailored financial education and investment strategies that account for gender-specific uncertain attitudes.
Informed trading in a two-tier market structure under financial distress (with Claudio Impenna)
The sovereign bond market has traditionally been the dominant segment of the euro area bond market and it is one of the largest in the world. Secondary market liquidity is an essential feature of a well-functioning and resilient government bond market. The secondary market of the European sovereign bonds is organised as a two-tier electronic market, with an inter-dealer and a dealer-to-customer segment. The previous literature uses a sequential trade model, to investigate the probability of informed trading (PIN) in the parallel trading of the same bond on these two venues, finding that the PIN is significantly lower in the dealer-to-customer segment than in the inter-dealer one. We contribute to the existing literature analysing this two-tier market for a longer period, which includes episodes of financial distress in the Eurozone and various ECB interventions to try to contain the crisis. We show that the crisis deeply affected the two segments of the market, reverting the conclusion about the presence of informed traders in the two platforms for some periods, and questioning the need for this trading structure and its stability.
Gender effects in a social dilemma with third-party punishment opportunities (with Daniela Di Cagno and Michalis Drouvelis)
This paper investigates whether contribution behaviour and third-party punishment are susceptible to gender effects when cooperation norms are violated. Our framework is a one-shot social dilemma game with third-party punishment opportunities. In our experiment, subjects are informed of the others’ gender within their group, allowing us to estimate differences in behaviour due to the group’s gender composition. Our main findings show that third-party punishment is susceptible to gender effects, with males punishing more in homogeneous (same-gender) than in heterogeneous (mixed-gender) groups, irrespective of whether the gender of the contributor is male or female. Overall, our results have important implications for the design of teams in the presence of free-riding incentives.