This work was supported by a grant of the Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digitization, CNCS/CCCDI – UEFISCDI, project number PN-III-P4-ID-PCE-2020-0929, within PNCDI III
This project aims to identify the determinants of household saving behavior from three perspectives: (i) How does the socio-economic environment influence household saving behavior?; (ii) How do banking regulations affect depositors’ behaviour?; and (iii) Which is the impact of crisis on depositors’ confidence in banks?
We will address limitations from the literature by employing a rich dataset of European countries, i.e. harmonized surveys (e.g. SHARE and HFCS), a unique database of depositors of a large Romanian bank, a field experiment conducted in Suceava county among 600 farmers from 27 villages. These allow us to examine socio-economic attributes of depositors that are less explored/neglected in the literature and the relation between households, regulators, banks and depositors. The period we examine comprises several crisis events, including the recent COVID-19 crisis, which impact on depositors’ behavior has not been investigated yet.
We will contribute to the theoretical literature on depositors’ behavior by providing a dynamic model in which the regulator maximizes a social welfare function by optimally choosing policies and interventions that affect banks’ funding structure, based on households’ socio-economic status. Also, we will add to the empirical literature on depositors by testing the extent to which the European regulators adhered to the predictions of our theoretical model, employing a wide range of econometric and deep learning techniques.