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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the information content of the variables that can help detecting external and internal imbalances in an early stage. The starting point is the Scoreboard, where nine indicators are chosen in order to increase macroeconomic surveillance of all member states.

This paper provides an overview of the variables that could be informative for imbalances by focusing on EU-27 countries over the period 1960-2010. The number of chosen variables is 28, and they are aggregated in six macro-areas. Therefore, once an imbalance is observed in any of those areas, it is possible to detect in a simple way which specific variable is determining such outcome.

In general, this approach provides reliable signal to the policy-makers about the indicators that can drive imbalances within the area, shedding light on the relationship among the variables included in the analysis, too.

In fact, the empirical results underline some well-known critical issue for several countries, and is largely in line with results obtained in a variety of EC and OECD studies.

The main added value of the approach adopted in this paper is the introduction of more variables than those initially proposed by the European Commission in the construction of the Scoreboard. This provides more information about the macroeconomic situation in each country, preserving, however, the simplicity of the analysis as the variables are aggregated by homogeneous areas.

Se Heine non giunse fino a Roma, in compenso vi arrivarono altri non meno illustri tedeschi, il cui genio si immortalò nel campo musicale. Per non parlare di Händel, che visitò Roma nel 1707, nè di Gluck, che vi venne nel 1756, ricorderemoper il'700 — Wolfango Amedeo Mozart e — per 1'800 — Riccardo Wagner.

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?

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.

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.

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.