"The Development of Mass Savings in the U.S. and France"

Why do personal savings differ so much between countries such as the U.S. and France? Voluntary personal savings (and the lack thereof) are ubiquitous in shaping individuals’ economic lives and sense of security, yet they have rarely been studied as a focal point. This paper takes a historical institutionalist approach to studying cross-national savings variation, taking the U.S. and France as case studies. In both countries, philanthropy-founded savings banks mushroomed in the early 19th century, transforming savings into a mass-scale, regulated practice. While these countries faced similar dilemmas about using savings as a tool for social policy and source of funding for government debt, their approaches to regulating savings institutions and structuring savings markets diverged. This divergence led to the development of what I define as market-based savings in the U.S. and collective savings in France.