  The European Credit Research Institute Research Report 2013 identifies
Households debt "rapid increase and abrupt retrenchment" among the causes of
macroeconomic instability in the European Union after 2008. In our research: i)
we accessed the Bank of Italy Online Statistical Database on Customers and Risk
for Producer Households and Non-Financial Corporations with R Sweave open
access statistical software, which makes our analysis freely reproducible by
other researchers; ii) we subset the European System of Accounts sector
Households into the Bank of Italy sub-sectors Households and Producer
Households, which are market producing entities limited to informal
partnerships, de facto companies and sole proprietorships with up to five
employees and iii) we tested the hypothesis of "rapid increase and abrupt
retrenchment" of debt for this subset in Italy for the period 1996-2013. We
found that PH debt (bad debt) has been more stable with a lower Variation
Coefficient of 10.3% (14.2%) versus 13.2% (20.1%) in NFC. We also found that
the time series of the ratio of debt granted to NFC (numerator) versus PH
(denominator) is best described (Multiple Squared 0.95) by the concavity of the
5th degree coefficient (slope -1.22; 95% CI -1.52 - -0.91) of a 5th order
polynomial linear regression and by the convexity of the 2nd degree coefficient
(slope 4.26; 95% CI 2.53 - 5.99) for bad debt (Multiple R Squared 0.47), with
this concavity of debt and convexity of bad debt beginning with the Italian
crisis in the second trimester of 2008. We reject the hypothesis (p < 0.01) of
"rapid increase and abrupt retrenchment" of debt for the subset Producer
Households during the Italian Crisis. We generate the hypothesis that this
subset could represent a prospective source of stability relative to
Non-Financial Corporation.
