The impact of financial crisis on savings decisions: evidences from Italian pension funds

This paper provides an empirical analysis of the impact of the financial crisis on households’ saving decisions in private pension schemes. We base our study on an original dataset made up of three sample surveys collected in 2008, in 2012 and in 2015 by Mefop. Each survey has been conducted interviewing by phone more than 10000 people in order to construct a representative sample of roughly 1000 individual for each survey, which includes both members and not members of Italian pension funds. Each wave allows us to map saving decisions and personal characteristics (income, type of occupation, political orientation, financial literacy, etc.) in two distinct moment: before the crisis and after the crisis. Therefore we can identify the impact of the financial turmoil simply introducing a dummy variable. Results shows that the probability to invest in a private pension scheme has been barely touched and in some cases it is also possible to register an increase.