(Ir)rational Households’ Saving Behavior? An Empirical Investigation

What is the households’ saving behavior during different stages of economic cycle? What is the reaction of households’ to the external shocks? Which factors motivate households’ to save in foreign currency rather than in national currency? Are households’ saving decisions rational and based on fundamentals economic indicators or, in contrary, irrational and resulted by ‘herding’ behavior? While these research questions are important for various reasons they are investigated in this empirical study. The objective of this study – to identify the economic and psychological factors influencing the households’ saving behavior. The research methods: the systemic, logical and comparative analysis of the scientific literature and panel regression. The results of this empirical study show that the households’ saving behavior is more irrational especially during economic downturn and financial crisis periods. These empirical findings can be explained by low degree of financial literacy, ineffective communication strategy of the central banks and governments during financial turmoil and economic downturn periods, etc.