Personal Experience and Savings Behaviour

一个人减少消费、增加储蓄的决定揭示了他或她对未来事件的预期以及不同偏好的信息。例如，如果一个家庭计划在未来进行高支出（建房、子女教育），或希望对冲负面冲击（疾病、养家糊口者失业），储蓄可能会增加。当储蓄者面临新的原因，担心即将到来的经济或政治危机（通货膨胀、破产、战争或独裁政权的没收）带来财务损失时，我们预计储蓄活动会减少。也有可能是新的或额外的转移支付（养老金、失业救济金）的引入挤出了私人储蓄。我们将研究哪些信息储蓄者建立了他们的乐观或悲观预期。他们是依赖媒体提供的信息，还是对真实的利率变化等直接经济信号做出反应？基于Malmendier和内格尔的开创性工作，我们假设储蓄者的个人经历对他或她的个人期望和储蓄决策有重要影响。例如，过去经历过高通胀的人可能比只知道价格稳定的人有更高的通胀预期。从1871年到1970年，我们观察了许多重大冲击，这些冲击可能影响了亲身经历过这些冲击的人的储蓄行为。我们观察到两次世界大战和一系列严重伤害德国储蓄者的大规模和广泛的经济危机。想想19世纪70年代的“Gründerkrise”、1923年的恶性通货膨胀、1948年的货币改革、大萧条以及其他规模较小的危机，如1907年的股市崩盘。因此，基于个人储蓄账簿、家庭账簿、日记和其他可用的档案材料来研究储蓄行为，为我们研究个人经验如何塑造个人储蓄决策提供了理想的条件。

An individual’s decision to consume less and save more reveals information about his or her expectations about future events as well as heterogeneous preferences. Savings may increase, for example, if a household plans high expenditures in the future (house building, education of children) or wants to hedge against negative shocks (illness, unemployment of the breadwinner). We expect a reduction in savings activity when a saver is confronted with new reasons for fearing financial losses in approaching economic or political crises (inflation, bankruptcy, war, or expropriation by an authoritarian regime). It is also possible that the introduction of new or additional transfer payments (pensions, unemployment benefits) crowds out private savings. We will study on which information savers built their optimistic or pessimistic expectations. Do the rely on information provided by the media or do the react to direct economic signals such as changes in the real interest rate? Based on the seminal work of Malmendier and Nagel we assume that a saver’s personal experience has an import impact on his or her individual expectations and savings decisions. People who experienced high inflation in their past, for example, might have higher inflation expectations than people who only know price stability. Our period of observation from 1871 to 1970 comprise many major shocks that might have influenced the savings behaviour of people who personally experienced them. We observe two World Wars and a number of large and widespread economic crises that severely harmed German savers. Just think about the “Gründerkrise” in the 1870s, the hyperinflation in 1923, the currency reform of 1948, the Great Depression, and other smaller crises such as the stock market crash in 1907. Studying savings behaviour based on individual saving books, household books, diaries and other available archival material over this long time span, therefore gives us ideal conditions to study how personal experience have shaped individual savings decisions.