Household Real Interest Rate Expectations and Spending

Last registered on September 19, 2025
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Household Real Interest Rate Expectations and Spending
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0016795
Initial registration date
September 19, 2025

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
September 19, 2025, 10:33 AM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Country
Germany
Region
Hessen

Primary Investigator

Name
Maciej Sztachera
Affiliation
Goethe University Frankfurt
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Georg Dürnecker
PI Affiliation
Goethe University Frankfurt
Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status
Completed
Start date
2025-08-15
End date
2025-09-01
Keywords
Finance & Microfinance
Additional Keywords
real interest rate expectations, attention, wealth, financial literacy
JEL code(s)
D84, E21
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
The accuracy of real interest rate forecasts is U-shaped in total net wealth.
Where does the U-shaped pattern of forecast accuracy in wealth come from?
We hypothesize that attention to interest rates and inflation is U-shaped in net worth.
To test the hypothesis, we propose an information provision experiment.
We provide treated individuals with information about the average rate of return on term deposit accounts and inflation in Germany.
We infer the degree of attention to real interest rates from the updating coefficient and test whether it differs across household net wealth levels.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Dürnecker, Georg and Maciej Sztachera. 2025. "Household Real Interest Rate Expectations and Spending." AEA RCT Registry. September 19. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.16795-1.0
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
All groups receive information about the 100.000 € deposit insurance in Germany. The first treatment group receives information about the average interest rate offered by German banks in June 2025 on term deposit accounts with a maturity of up to 1 year. Short-term deposits are the most popular form of term deposits in Germany. The second treatment group receives information about the June 2025 average interest rate on term deposits with a maturity of up to one year, as well as the Bundesbank's June 2025 inflation projection for 2026. We view these two pieces of information as a signal about the real interest rate on term deposits.
Intervention (Hidden)
Intervention Start Date
2025-08-15
Intervention End Date
2025-09-01

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Expectations about inflation and the rate of return on term deposit accounts with a maturity of up to one year.
Expected spending growth rate and actual spending behavior in subsequent survey waves.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
Expected real rate of return on term deposit accounts with a maturity of up to one year constructed from point forecasts of inflation and the nominal rate of return on term deposit accounts.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
We implemented our experiment in the August wave (wave 68) of Bundesbank Online Panel Households (BOP-HH) in cooperation with the Bundesbank's Research Data and Service Center (RDSC).
Forsa Institute is responsible for coding the questionnaire and running the survey.
We propose an information provision experiment testing whether household attention to real interest rates differs across net worth.
If households are more attentive to nominal interest rates and inflation, they should revise their expectations less on receipt of new information. The coefficient on the interaction of the treatment dummy with prior expectations recovers the negative of the updating rate.
If the updating rate is hump-shaped in total net wealth, wealth heterogeneity in attention can potentially explain the U-shaped pattern of real interest rate forecast accuracy in total net wealth.
Additionally, we plan to test whether the strength of updating is decreasing in financial literacy.
To understand how information affects behavior, we ask households about their expected growth rate of nondurable consumption spending before and after receiving the information treatment.
Furthermore, we plan to use the panel dimension of the survey to measure the treatment's impact on spending behavior.
The last interviews in a given BOP-HH wave are usually conducted in the first week of the subsequent month. For our intervention, this corresponds to the first week of September. As of September 19th, the trial has ended, and we expect to gain access to the data in four weeks.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Randomization performed by the survey company Forsa
Randomization Unit
Individual
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
No clustering
Sample size: planned number of observations
3000 individuals
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
1000 control, 1000 treatment rate of return on term deposits, 1000 treatment rate of return on term deposits and inflation
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
IRB Approval Date
IRB Approval Number
Analysis Plan

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials