IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cth/wpaper/gru_2019_004.html

The Interest Rate Effect on Private Saving: Alternative Perspectives

Author

Listed:
  • Joshua Aizenman

    (Department of Economics, University of Southern California)

  • Ying-Wong Cheung

    (Department of Economics, City University of Hong Kong)

  • Hiro Ito

    (Department of Economics, Portland State University)

Abstract

Lowering the policy interest rate could stimulate consumption and investment while discouraging people from saving. However, such a move may also prompt people to save more to compensate for the low rate of return. Using the data of 135 countries from 1995 to 2014, we show that a low-interest rate environment can yield different effects on private saving under different economic environments. The real interest rate affects private saving negatively if output volatility, old-age dependency, or financial development is above a certain threshold. Depending on a country’s specific economic circumstances, these effects are significant for the economy—a four-percentage point decline in the real interest rate, which is approximately the same as one standard deviation for China, would lead to a 1.52 percentage point increase in the Chinese private saving rate. Further, when the real interest rate is below 1.1%, greater output volatility would lead to higher private saving in developing countries.

Suggested Citation

  • Joshua Aizenman & Ying-Wong Cheung & Hiro Ito, 2019. "The Interest Rate Effect on Private Saving: Alternative Perspectives," GRU Working Paper Series GRU_2019_004, City University of Hong Kong, Department of Economics and Finance, Global Research Unit.
    • Handle: RePEc:cth:wpaper:gru_2019_004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cb.cityu.edu.hk/ef/doc/GRU/WPS/GRU%232019-004%20Cheung.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Felici, Marco & Kenny, Geoff & Friz, Roberta, 2023. "Consumer savings behaviour at low and negative interest rates," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    3. Michael G. Arghyrou & Maria Dolores Gadea, 2019. "Private bank deposits and macro/fiscal risk in the euro-area," CESifo Working Paper Series 7532, CESifo.
    4. Shiting Ding & Qintian Pan & Yanming Zhang & Jingru Zhang & Qiong Yang & Jingdong Luan, 2023. "Study on the China’s real interest rate after including housing price factor into CPI," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 18(8), pages 1-11, August.
    5. Mirpourian, Mehrdad, 2020. "A Gendered Look at Savings Behavior among Nigerian Microsavers," MPRA Paper 103221, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Philemon Kwame Opoku, 2020. "The Short-Run and Long-Run Determinants of Household Saving: Evidence from OECD Economies," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 62(3), pages 430-464, September.
    7. Yi Zhang & Man Tsun Wong & Yik Wa Law & Paul Siu Fai Yip, 2025. "Public Housing and Household Savings—A Three-Decade Repeated Cross-Sectional Analysis," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 22(8), pages 1-18, July.
    8. Artemis Stratopoulou, 2023. "Assessing the Effects of Capital Account Liberalization on Savings," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 34(5), pages 1107-1170, November.
    9. Renáta Pitoňáková, 2018. "Private Sector Savings," DANUBE: Law and Economics Review, European Association Comenius - EACO, issue 1, pages 1-17, March.
    10. Philemon Kwame Opoku, 2019. "The Short-Run and Long-Run Determinants of Household Saving:Evidence from OECD countries," Working Papers REM 2019/0110, ISEG - Lisbon School of Economics and Management, REM, Universidade de Lisboa.
    11. Yin-Wong Cheung & Sven Steinkamp & Frank Westermann, 2020. "A Tale of Two Surplus Countries: China and Germany," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 31(1), pages 131-158, February.
    12. Mirpourian, Mehrdad, 2020. "A Gendered Look at Savings Behavior among Nigerian Microsavers," MPRA Paper 103062, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Cajsa Fredriksson & Klaas Staal, 2021. "Determinants of Household Savings: A Cross-Country Analysis," International Advances in Economic Research, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 27(4), pages 257-272, November.
    14. Philemon Kwame Opoku, 0. "The Short-Run and Long-Run Determinants of Household Saving: Evidence from OECD Economies," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 0, pages 1-35.
    15. Ondřej Badura, . "Interest Rates and Household Saving Behaviour: An Empirical Puzzle and a Solution Using Czech Data," Prague Economic Papers, University of Economics, Prague, vol. 0.
    16. Hong Kong Monetary Authority, 2025. "Monetary policy decision-making: how are household and firm heterogeneity incorporated?," BIS Papers chapters, in: Bank for International Settlements (ed.), How can central banks take account of differences across households and firms for monetary policy?, volume 127, pages 121-130, Bank for International Settlements.
    17. repec:bla:pacecr:v:23:y:2018:i:1:p:8-26 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Stefan Angrick & Naoko Nemoto, 2017. "Central Banking below Zero: The Implementation of Negative Interest Rate Policies in Europe and Japan," ADBI Working Papers 740, Asian Development Bank Institute.
    19. Wenjin Tang & Weichang Chen & Xiaorui Ma & Chengbo Fu, 2025. "Negative interest rate policy and bank risk‐taking: Search for yield or de‐leverage?," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(3), pages 2450-2469, July.
    20. Klaas Staal, 2023. "Household Savings and Negative Interest Rates," International Advances in Economic Research, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 29(1), pages 1-13, May.
    21. Manuel Rupprecht, 2020. "Income and wealth of euro area households in times of ultra-loose monetary policy: stylised facts from new national and financial accounts data," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 281-302, May.
    22. Ignacio Hernando & Irene Pablos & Daniel Santabárbara & Javier Vallés, 2018. "Private saving. New cross-country evidencebased on bayesian techniques," Working Papers 1802, Banco de España.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • F3 - International Economics - - International Finance
    • F31 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Foreign Exchange
    • F32 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Current Account Adjustment; Short-term Capital Movements
    • F36 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Financial Aspects of Economic Integration

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cth:wpaper:gru_2019_004. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: GRU The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask GRU to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/decithk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.