Left-wing Economic Populism and Savings: How Do Attitudes Influence Forward-Looking Financial Behavior?

This paper uses the case of Ukraine to explore the association between attitudes and saving behavior. We hypothesize that individuals' preferences and beliefs, which we proxy with support for left-wing populist economic policies, have an adverse effect on strategic, forward-looking behavior. Using the data from a nationally representative survey conducted in 2019, we find that support for populist economic policies has a negative association with a likelihood to have bank savings. The results hold in the presence of socio-economic and behavioral factors and when we remove the variation attributed to the cultural and socio-economic factors from our measure of economic populism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]