How Did CESEE Households Weather the Crisis? Evidence from the OeNB Euro Survey

Majken Corti () and Thomas Scheiber ()
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Thomas Scheiber: Oesterreichische Nationalbank, Foreign Research Division, http://www.oenb.at

Focus on European Economic Integration, 2014, issue 2, 76-87

Abstract: During the crisis period from 2008 to 2013 household disposable income deteriorated significantly in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe (CESEE), forcing households to adjust their consumption plans. Against this background, the present paper sheds some light on households’ consumption smoothing behavior based on microdata supplied by the OeNB Euro Survey for ten countries in CESEE. We find that households reacted to stagnating and in some countries falling income mostly by cutting back on everyday consumption and reducing or postponing large expenditures, while other households coped by reducing the amounts they were setting aside as savings or by drawing on existing savings, overdrawing their current accounts and increasing work hours. Moreover, we find that macroeconomic forecasts by the European Commission, the wiiw and the OeNB are broadly in line with economic sentiment among CESEE households. Finally, Euro Survey results revealed that not all households were able to borrow as much as they would have liked to and that the share of households planning to take out a loan fell between 2008 and 2013.

Keywords: economic and financial crisis; consumption smoothing; household debt; survey data; Central; Eastern and Southeastern Europe (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 D14 E21 G01 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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