We study the role of household saving behaviour, of individual motives for saving and that of perceived liquidity constraints in 15 Euro Area countries. The empirical analysis is based on the Household Finance and Consumption Survey, a new harmonized data set collecting detailed information on...

This study investigates whether and how the crisis in 2008/2009 affects households' risk attitudes, subjective risk and return expectations, and planned financial risk taking using the German SAVE study. Households' wealth change from end-2007 to end-2009 is not found to have an effect. However,...

This paper analyses empirically how cross-border consumption varies across product and services categories and across household characteristics. It focuses on the part of cross-border sales that arise due to work-related cross-border crossings; it analyses the cross-border consumption behaviour...

The financial and economic crisis also left its mark on the privately funded old-age provision (Riester-Pension) in Germany: an analysis of the SAVE panel dataset shows that the coverage with Riester-contracts stagnated in 2008. Only households with low incomes exhibited small but positive...

Mortgages constitute the largest part of household debt. An essential choice when taking out a mortgage is between fixed-interest-rate mortgages (FRMs) and adjustable-interest-rate mortgages (ARMs). However, so far, no comprehensive cross-country study has analyzed what determines household...

Die Finanz- und Wirtschaftskrise hat sich zwar negativ auf den Wert von Vermögensanlagen ausgewirkt aber nicht so stark, wie allgemein angenommen wird. Die Dynamik in der Verbreitung der Riester-Verträge wurde allerdings durch die Krise gestoppt. Einen leichten Rückgang gab es vor allem bei...

Using a dedicated set of questions in the 2014 Luxembourg Household Finance and Consumption Survey (LU-HFCS), we show that a substantial share of households contributes their own labour to the acquisition of their main residence. These contributions help households faced with credit constraints,...

This paper analyses empirically how cross-border consumption varies across product and services categories and across household characteristics. It focuses on the part of cross-border sales that arise due to work-related cross-border crossings; it analyses the cross-border consumption behaviour...