WHAT DETERMINES THE SAVING RATE IN WESTERN BALKAN COUNTRIES?

This paper presents the research of saving and its determinants in Western Balkan countries. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between various macroeconomic and demographic indicators, on the one side, and gross national saving rate in Western Balkan countries including Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania and Serbia, on the other side and, using the examples from available empirical literature, to develop the model which would produce the highest number of significant variables possible, given the available data. After the model is created, it is further tested for significance and typical statistical assumptions including autocorrelation, homoscedasticity, normality, cross-sectional independence and multicolinearity. Data used for the purpose of the statistical model are collected for the period between 2000 and 2015. Results obtained show GDP, GDP growth, gross domestic savings, domestic credit, inflation, urban population and total age dependency as statistically significant, while unemployment rate, deposit rate and investment rate are insignificant. According to the the model developed, Western Balkan countries should focus on contributing to their GDP’s, increasing productivity and per capita incomes, in order to improve the rate of gross national savings.