 The Determinants of Savings: Lessons from ItalyTullio Jappelli () and Marco Pagano CSEF Working Papers from Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy Abstract: In most of the postwar period Italy featured an abnormally high saving rate, compared to most other industrialized countries. But this is no longer true. Under any definition, in the last decade the Italian saving rate has fallen below the average of the developed economies. Why was the Italian saving ratio comparatively high and why has its decline been so dramatic? In this paper we consider various potential answers to these questions. We particularly focus on the recent slowdown in productivity growth, the development of credit and insurance markets, and the changes in the social security system. In the second part of the paper we use a series of repeated cross-sections from the Survey of Household Income and Wealth in order to check if the macroeconomic explanation for the decline in saving are consistent with microeconomic data. Keywords: saving (search for similar items in EconPapers) Published in Accounting for Saving: Financial Liberalization, Capital Flows and Growth in Latin America and Europe, C. Reinhart ed. Washington: Inter-American Development Bank, 1999 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sef:csefwp:01 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in CSEF Working Papers from Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy Contact information at EDIRC. |
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