Excess Savings Are Not Excessive

Good blog post from FRBNY that makes the case that the excess savings accumulated over the past year are unlikely to generate a demand surge as the pandemic recedes, "... these savings are not that excessive, when considered against the backdrop of the unprecedented government interventions adopted over the past year in support of households and that they are unlikely to generate a surge in demand post-pandemic...."

Their argument in terms of accounting identity the excess savings derive from excess (pandemic related) government spending, “…Excess savings are the accounting counterpart of “extra” government debt. According to the principles of national income accounting, the flow of private saving (by households and businesses) must be channeled to one of three uses. It can finance investment, be lent abroad, or lent to the government. In 2020, the U.S. government spent roughly $2 trillion to fight the COVID-19 recession, most of it financed with debt. The $1.6 trillion in “excess savings” is the accounting counterpart of this increase in government borrowing.As is often the case with accounting identities, this observation has limited economic implications. It does not reveal why households accumulated the “excess savings,” nor whether they will spend them once the economy fully re-opens. Nonetheless, it helps us to consider them under a different light—not as “extra” resources ready to be spent, but as the flip side of the extraordinary fiscal effort to fight the COVID-19 pandemic….”
In practical terms they believe this plays out as follows, “…. Excess savings are mostly held by…savers. One reason why many economists do not associate the exceptional increase in government debt over the past year with an imminent explosion in aggregate demand—even though they might worry about it for a host of other reasons—is the idea that government debt is money that citizens owe to themselves. As such, it would not represent “net wealth” that is ready to be spent. In economics jargon, this idea is known as Ricardian Equivalence. According to this proposition, public transfers financed with government debt do not affect consumption because households save them to pay for the increase in taxes that will eventually be necessary to repay that debt. If Ricardian Equivalence held, the marginal propensity to consume out of debt-financed transfers would be zero, and the resulting savings would never be spent. Ricardian Equivalence is the kind of theoretical benchmark that economists love, but it clearly does not hold in practice. In fact, many U.S. families did spend a significant share of the checks and other income support that they received during the pandemic. According to available estimates, this share is around one-third on average. The rest was used to pay down debt (also about one-third) or otherwise saved. It is hard to know exactly who holds these savings, but it seems reasonable to assume that they are individuals and families with a bit of a buffer in their budgets—and whose consumption decisions are therefore less sensitive to their immediate economic circumstances. This is presumably what allowed them to save part of the support they received. According to economic theory, these savers are more likely to be Ricardian, and hence to continue holding on to these savings. Of course, their economic circumstances might change in the future and they might find themselves in need to spend those accumulated resources, but the end of the pandemic in itself is unlikely to turn them from savers to immediate spenders. If anything, fewer households should face financial hardship as aggregate conditions improve. Excess savings are unlikely to unleash pent-up demand for services. One caveat to the previous reasoning is that some of the “excess savings” might be due to a dearth of spending opportunities in the sectors of the economy most affected by the virus, such as travel and entertainment. If this is true, some of that lost spending could materialize once those sectors fully re-open…”

They estimate ~ 1/3 of the savings will be spent, an estimate in line with the 2008 “Economic Stimulus Act” (the Bush checks)“…How large is this “pent-up” demand for services likely to be? On the one hand, there is little doubt that many consumers will enjoy a few extra restaurant meals and perhaps splurge on a nicer vacation after such a long period without them. On the other hand, there is a limit to how many extra restaurant meals and vacations people will be able to enjoy. To have a sense of how much of this pent-up demand might be activated by the “excess savings” accumulated during the pandemic, recall that available estimates of the propensity to consume out of the CARES Act transfers is about one-third. This means that the average household spent about 33 cents out of each dollar received in direct payments. As it turns out, this estimate is in line with those based on previous transfers of this kind, such as the Economic Stimulus Payments of 2008. Therefore, the pandemic does not seem to have substantially limited households’ ability to spend the support that they received….”