Kennickell (Federal Reserve Board) and Peter Tufano (University of Oxford) act as external consultants, and Sébastien Pérez Duarte (ECB) and Jiri Slacalek (ECB) as Secretaries. The HFCN collects household-level data on households' fi nances and consumption in the euro area through a harmonised survey. The HFCN aims at studying in depth the micro-level structural information on euro area households' assets and liabilities. The objectives of the network are: 1) understanding economic behaviour of individual households, developments in aggregate variables and the interactions between the two; 2) evaluating the impact of shocks, policies and institutional changes on household portfolios and other variables; 3) understanding the implications of heterogeneity for aggregate variables; 4) estimating choices of different households and their reaction to economic shocks; 5) building and calibrating realistic economic models incorporating heterogeneous agents; 6) gaining insights into issues such as monetary policy transmission and fi nancial stability. The refereeing process of this paper has been coordinated by a team composed of Gabriel Fagan (ECB), Pirmin Fessler (Oesterreichische Nationalbank),

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In 2012 the Italian Parliament introduced into Italian law a special section in the Companies Register and a large number of financial incentives to create a favorable environment for the development of 'innovative start-ups' (ISUPs). In this paper we compare ISUPs with other start-ups. In accordance with the eligibility criteria established by law, ISUPs show a striking capacity for innovation apparent in a higher incidence of intangible assets and the longer time it takes to begin selling their products. ISUPs also report higher investment rates and stronger growth in sales and assets, while their financial structures are characterized by higher capitalization and greater availability of liquid assets. Based on propensity score matching, we also highlight some direct effects of the 2012 law on their financial structures, almost exclusively on ISUPs operating in the service sectors: their external funding, either debt or equity, increases more than for other similar firms; a stronger rise in investment rates is specifically associated with a larger upsurge in their capital.

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This paper compares two indicators of household vulnerability using the Bank of Italy's Survey on Household Income and Wealth (2008-2014). According to the first indicator, a household is considered vulnerable if its debt service-to-income ratio exceeds 30 per cent and its income is below the median of the population. According to the second, a household is defined vulnerable if the sum of its income and liquid financial assets is not sufficient to cover debt payments and basic living costs for four months. While providing similar information on the proportion of households deemed vulnerable, the two indicators capture different aspects of the sector's financial fragility: vulnerable households according to the first indicator have, on average, higher income, liquid assets and debt than those identified by the second indicator. Moreover, while the first indicator shows a lower correlation with payment arrears, its simplicity, timeliness and less arbitrary components make it better suited for cross-country comparisons.