8th SUERF & UniCredit Foundation Research Prize and Workshop

Savings behaviour in crisis and post-crisis times

Date: 22 April 2021
Time: 13:30-16:30
Venue: Cisco Webex Events

The Global Financial Crisis and COVID-19 crisis have, among many other things, also affected savings behaviour. Changes involve both aggregate household savings ratios, individual propensity to consume and to save, as well as portfolio choice. While the post-GFC and COVID-induced very low interest rates have likely reduced income motives for saving, crises put precautionary savings into the foreground. In the COVID-19 crisis, new attention was directed to savings motives, given the impossibility to consume, resulting in “forced savings”. The COVID-19 crisis also raises the question whether consumption and household savings behaviour will change more permanently, and beyond the time of the constraints imposed by the pandemic and related containment measures. Such changes would have important permanent consequences on aggregate demand, structural employment/unemployment, potential growth, the sectoral composition of output, the natural rate of interest and, as a result, the environment in which fiscal and monetary policies act.

Thursday, 22 April 2021
13:10	Online connection

13:30	Welcome & opening

	Welcome Ernest Gnan, Head of Economic Analysis Division, OeNB and SUERF Secretary General Opening Address Pietro Carlo Padoan, Chairman of the UniCredit Group Keynote Lecture: The Pandemic reset and its implications for household finances Michael Haliassos, Chair of Macroeconomics and Finance, Goethe University Frankfurt Presentation - pdf

14:30	8th SUERF UniCredit Foundation Award: Paper Presentations

	Chair: Maurizio Beretta, Chairman, UniCredit Foundation Paper 1: The Saving and Employment Effects of Higher Job Loss Risk Ragnar Juelsrud & Ella Getz Wold, Norges Bank Paper (pdf) Presentation - pdf Paper 2: The Great depression as a saving glut Victor Degorce & Eric Monnet, PhD student at the EHESS \| Paris School of Economics and EHESS CEPR Research affiliate Presentation - pdf

15:00	Panel: COVID and savings behaviour: What lessons? Any lasting impact?

	Moderator: Arne Holzhausen, Head of Insurance, Wealth and Trend Research, Allianz SE COVID and savings behaviour: What lessons? Any lasting impact? Stefan Gerlach, Chief Economist, EFG Presentation - pdf Household savings during the pandemic Geoff Kenny, Head, Monetary Economics Section, DG Research, ECB Presentation - pdf The unprecedented changes in households’ and corporates’ savings during the pandemic Erik Nielsen, Global Chief Economist, UniCredit Group Presentation - pdf Covid-19 and savings behavior: a few selected issues Jorge Sicilia, Chief Economist, BBVA Presentation - pdf Savings behaviour in crisis and post-crisis times Kurtulus T. Diamondopoulos, Director, Central Banks and Public Policy, World Gold Council Presentation - pdf Jens Ulbrich, Director, Deutsche Bundesbank In this video, Arne Holzhausen, Allianz SE, Stefan Gerlach, EFG Bank, Geoff Kenny, ECB, Erik Nielsen, UniCredit Group, Jorge Sicilia, BBVA, Kurtulus T. Diamondopoulos, World Gold Council, and Jens Ulbrich, Deutsche Bundesbank, discuss what has been driving savings - and consumption - behavior during the COVID-19 crises, and how savings, consumption and the economic recovery might evolve going forward. Savings rates (the share of savings in households" disposable income) have doubled in many countries during the COVID-19 pandemic, as a result of the impossibility to consume due to lockdowns and other containment measures, while households" and businesses" income losses were supported by government aid. Will households, once the lockdowns will be over, reduce their savings rates back to pre-crisis levels? Will they seek to run down their stock of savings accumulated during the pandemic to pre-crisis levels? Will this leed to a spending spree and trigger a vigorous economic recovery? Or are higher savings here to stay, implying a lacklustre economic recovery? And how has portfolio choice been affected by the COVID and the very low risk-free interest rate? Will there be lasting changes, e.g. towards stocks and real estate?

16:30	End

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Savings behaviour in crisis and post-crisis times