IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/iwhpno/12021.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Why are households saving so much during the corona recession?

Author

Listed:
  • Gropp, Reint
  • McShane, William

Abstract

Savings rates among European households have reached record levels during the Corona recession. We investigate three possible explanations for the increase in household savings: precautionary motivations induced by increased economic uncertainty, reduced consumption opportunities due to lockdown measures, and Ricardian Equivalence, i.e. increases in the expected future tax-burden of households driven by increases in government debt. To test these explanations, we compile a monthly panel of euro area countries from January 2019 to August 2020. Our findings indicate that the chief driver of the increase in household savings is supply: As governments restrict households' opportunities to spend, households spend less. We estimate that going from no lockdown measures to that of Italy's in March, would have resulted in the growth of Germany's deposit to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ratio being 0.6 percentage points higher each month. This would be equivalent to the volume of deposits increasing by roughly 14.3 billion euros or 348 euros per house monthly. Demand effects, driven by either fears of unemployment or fear of infection from COVID-19, appear to only have a weak impact on household savings, whereas changes in government debt are unrelated or even negatively related to savings rates. The analysis suggests that there is some pent-up demand for consumption that may unravel after lockdown measures are abolished and may result in a significant increase in consumption in the late spring/early summer 2021.

Suggested Citation

  • Gropp, Reint & McShane, William, 2021. "Why are households saving so much during the corona recession?," IWH Policy Notes 1/2021, Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:iwhpno:12021
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/242988/1/iwh-pn-2021-01.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ashoka Mody & Franziska Ohnsorge & Damiano Sandri, 2012. "Precautionary Savings in the Great Recession," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 60(1), pages 114-138, April.
    2. Dossche, Maarten & Zlatanos, Stylianos, 2020. "COVID-19 and the increase in household savings: precautionary or forced?," Economic Bulletin Boxes, European Central Bank, vol. 6.
    3. Barro, Robert J, 1974. "Are Government Bonds Net Wealth?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(6), pages 1095-1117, Nov.-Dec..
    4. Hayne E. Leland, 1968. "Saving and Uncertainty: The Precautionary Demand for Saving," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 82(3), pages 465-473.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Müller, Steffen, 2021. "Insolvenzen in der Corona-Krise," IWH Policy Notes 2/2021, Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH).
    2. Ren, He & Zheng, Yi, 2023. "COVID-19 vaccination and household savings: An economic recovery channel," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. De Andrés Mosquera, Andrés, 2017. "Los determinantes a largo plazo y su contribución a la tasa de ahorro de los hogares españoles en el período 1985-2016 || Long-term determinants and its contribution to Spanish household saving rate d," Revista de Métodos Cuantitativos para la Economía y la Empresa = Journal of Quantitative Methods for Economics and Business Administration, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Department of Quantitative Methods for Economics and Business Administration, vol. 24(1), pages 292-339, Diciembre.
    2. MORIKAWA Masayuki, 2017. "Impact of Policy Uncertainty on Consumption and Saving Behavior: Evidence from a survey on consumers," Discussion papers 17075, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    3. Alba Lugilde & Roberto Bande & Dolores Riveiro, 2018. "Precautionary saving in Spain during the great recession: evidence from a panel of uncertainty indicators," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 16(4), pages 1151-1179, December.
    4. Ethan Hunt & Dr. Hyungjoon Jeon & Dr. Sang Lee, 2021. "Determinants of Household Savings: An Empirical Evidence from the OECD Member Countries," Business and Economic Research, Macrothink Institute, vol. 11(2), pages 62-75, June.
    5. Valério Ercolani, . "The precautionary saving: theories, measurements and policies," Economic Bulletin and Financial Stability Report Articles and Banco de Portugal Economic Studies, Banco de Portugal, Economics and Research Department.
    6. Roberto Bande & Dolores Riveiro, 2013. "Private Saving Rates and Macroeconomic Uncertainty: Evidence from Spanish Regional Data," The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 44(3), pages 323-349.
    7. Michel Strawczynski, 1996. "Precautionary Savings And The Demand For Annuities," Bank of Israel Working Papers 1996.05, Bank of Israel.
    8. Kimball, Miles S & Mankiw, N Gregory, 1989. "Precautionary Saving and the Timing of Taxes," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(4), pages 863-879, August.
    9. Ana Lucia Luis & Natalia Teixeira & Rui Braz, 2023. "Portuguese Households Savings in Times of Pandemic: A Way to Better Resist the Escalating Inflation?," Papers 2304.02573, arXiv.org.
    10. Dimitris Anastasiou & Panayotis Kapopoulos & Kalliopi-Maria Zekente, 2023. "Sentimental Shocks and House Prices," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 67(4), pages 627-655, November.
    11. Paolo Fegatelli, 2021. "The one trillion euro digital currency: How to issue a digital euro without threatening monetary policy transmission and financial stability?," BCL working papers 155, Central Bank of Luxembourg.
    12. Antoine Bommier & François Le Grand, 2019. "Risk Aversion and Precautionary Savings in Dynamic Settings," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(3), pages 1386-1397, March.
    13. Becker, Torbjörn, 1995. "Budget Deficits, Stochastic Population Size and Consumption," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 75, Stockholm School of Economics.
    14. Barsky, Robert B & Mankiw, N Gregory & Zeldes, Stephen P, 1986. "Ricardian Consumers with Keynesian Propensities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(4), pages 676-691, September.
    15. Adema, Yvonne & Pozzi, Lorenzo, 2015. "Business cycle fluctuations and household saving in OECD countries: A panel data analysis," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 214-233.
    16. Skinner, Jonathan, 1988. "Risky income, life cycle consumption, and precautionary savings," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 237-255, September.
    17. repec:kob:wpaper:1634 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Lorenzo Pozzi & Barbara Sadaba, 2023. "Macroeconomic Disasters and Consumption Smoothing: International Evidence from Historical Data," Staff Working Papers 23-4, Bank of Canada.
    19. Jacinta C. Nwachukwu, 2017. "Tenure and Spending Within UK Households at the End of the Recent Recession," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 133(3), pages 1075-1104, September.
    20. Lugilde, Alba & Bande, Roberto & Riveiro, Dolores, 2017. "Precautionary Saving: a review of the theory and the evidence," MPRA Paper 77511, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    21. Valério Ercolani, 2016. "The precautionary saving: theories, measurements and policies," Economic Bulletin and Financial Stability Report Articles and Banco de Portugal Economic Studies, Banco de Portugal, Economics and Research Department.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:iwhpno:12021. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iwhhhde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.