In 2001, the voluntary additional Riester pension scheme was implemented in Germany. Financial subsidies should incentivize people to increase their private pension savings. In this paper, we hypothesize that these publicly subsidized savings mainly replace existing not subsidized savings and...

Eine möglichst breite Streuung der Geldanlagen gilt als eine wichtige Strategie der Risikominimierung bei Investitionsentscheidungen. Die Mehrzahl der Haushalte in Deutschland streut auch ihr Geldvermögen über mehrere Anlageformen. Ihr Anlageverhalten stimmt jedoch nur bedingt mit der von...

Given that savings behaviour and worker productivity have strong life-cycle components and given that demographic profiles vary across countries, population age structure should be linked to differences in levels of economic development. In this paper we measure the economic importance of age...

In this paper we argue that, for a group of converging economies of the European Union, participation in the euro area has been associated with easier access to financing by domestic economic agents. Easier access to financing was a significant impulse leading to a sharp increase in households'...

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the impact of capitalising durable goods on the Euro area household saving ratios and disposable incomes for the first time. The reason for this exercise is twofold. Firstly, it is generally accepted that individual households regard consumer durables as...

In an overlapping generations maximization framework with consumers, whose information on uncertain future income realizations is front loaded, a closed form aggregate consumption function with CRRA preferences is derived. To have a closed form solution we assume that consumers solve their...

This paper analyses the determinants of the natural rate of interest in a non-linear model where agents are uncertain over both future technology growth and the future course of monetary policy. I show that the real natural rate can be affected by sizable uncertainty premia, including premia...

In recent years there has been considerable variation in savings patterns across countries and regions, with implications for the configuration of global current account balances, asset valuations and real interest rates. This paper looks at the empirical drivers behind these trends. It uses a...