No abstract

The Panel on Household Finances (PHF) has established itself as one of the leading sources of microdata on households’ wealth in Germany since its inception in 2010. Over the last ten years, more than 7,583 households have participated in the surveys in 2010–11, 2014 and 2017, many of them taking part more than once (3,734 households). This paper provides an overview of the contents, main methodological aspects and use of the PHF data. It also highlights differences to other surveys and addresses how the survey may develop in the future.

Does economic policy uncertainty affect household stockholding? To answer this question we create a novel measure of household exposure to economic policy uncertainty news by combining survey information on the hours a household spends in reading newspapers and the frequency of such news in the popular press during a household's pre-interview period. After controlling for household fixed effects, month-year fixed effects and time-varying cognitive skills, we find that households with a higher exposure to economic policy uncertainty news are less likely to invest in stocks held directly or through mutual funds. This effect is independent from the market volatility index and household (first-moment) expectations about the stock market index.