Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/175693 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2017
Series/Report no.: 
ECB Working Paper No. 2069
Publisher: 
European Central Bank (ECB), Frankfurt a. M.
Abstract: 
This paper examines the role of culture in households' saving decisions. Exploiting the historical language borders within Switzerland, I isolate the effect of households' exposure to certain language groups from economic, institutional, demographic and geographic factors for a homogeneous and representative sample of households. The analysis uses the Swiss Household Panel which I complement with geographic and socio-economic data. I show that low- and middle-income households located in the German-speaking part are more than 11 percentage points more likely to save than similar households in the French-speaking part. In line with the existing literature, I show that these differences across language regions are consistent with different distributions of time preferences. By contrast, I do not find clear evidence for risk sharing during times of financial distress.
Subjects: 
Household Finance
Saving
Culture
Language
Household Economics
JEL: 
Z1
D12
E21
D91
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
ISBN: 
978-92-899-2791-8
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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