BEA online research seminar – Merike Kukk

We are delighted to invite you to the next BEA’s Online Research Seminars and are pleased to welcome Merike Kukk (Tallinn University of Technology, Bank of Estonia). Dr. Merike Kukk is Associate Professor at Tallinn University of Technology (Taltech), head of the master program in Applied Economics, and a part-time researcher at the central bank of Estonia. Her research topics cover household borrowing, saving, consumption and tax behaviour, gender inequality and intra-household resource allocation, as well as interactions between financial markets and the real economy. She has published her research in the Review of Economics of the Household, in the Review of Income and Wealth, in Public Finance Review, in International Tax and Public Finance, in Journal of Comparative Economics. She is teaching master seminar, microeconomics and public economics in the master program.

More about the speaker: www.taltech.ee/person/merike-kukk

Speaker: Merike Kukk (Tallinn University of Technology, Bank of Estonia)

Title: Joint and individual savings within families: evidence from bank accounts

Co-author: W. Fred van Raaij (Tilburg University)

Abstract: In this paper, we investigate the ownership of financial assets within families and how pooling affects the individual savings of the partners. We use anonymised monthly transactional data from ING Bank to observe the financial data of Dutch couples for 2014–2016. We find that savings are quite equally allocated in almost half of households but in one-fifth of households there is only one partner who owns an individual account. The estimations show that joint savings contribute to a more equal division of savings since they are held equally. However, we find larger differences in individual savings among partners who pool, suggesting that the use of joint savings does not lead to individual savings being more evenly distributed, but rather to the opposite. The pattern is more apparent for households in their 20s and for saving accounts. The results of the study highlight the need to understand how families make decisions about applying the sharing rule to joint and individual savings.

Date: Wednesday, December 16

Time: 15:00 Vilnius, Riga, Tallinn

Join Zoom Meeting
https://sseriga-edu.zoom.us/j/81224545047?pwd=SUduZklQWHVoRTBWTVFtOGs0b2VjZz09

Meeting ID: 812 2454 5047
Passcode: 046509

Passcode: 341510