The literature investigates the relation between savings and interest rate mainly for household sector, but in recent decades households ceased to be the main source of savings in the economy. We try to identify how the savings of different sectors respond to the interest rate change using the SVAR methodology. We focus on Poland and generalize the results for other European economies. We find that although the household savings rate tends to rise after an increase of interest rate, the corporate savings simultaneously fall, inducing a negative conditional correlation between them. The responses of savings rate of general government and foreign savings are diverse (although the former usually declines after an interest rate increase) and does not seem to be related to factors like the membership in the currency union or the level of public debt. We also check the existence of the ‘crowding-out’ effects and conclude it only applies in the case of government savings crowding out household savings.

The economic activity indicators in Poland during the years 1995‒2011 exhibit various cyclical patterns. Employing the Christiano – Fitzgerald band-pass filter and unobserved components model it is shown that the cyclical processes of Polish economic activity are driven by overlapping higher frequency fluctuations (3‒4 years) and longer cycles of 8.5 years. The cyclical fluctuations of construction, transportation and trade are dissimilar to gross value added. Economic activity in transportation leads and in construction lags the fluctuations of gross value added. Cyclical fluctuations of gross value added seem to be determined by industry and construction. Manufacturing, especially capital and intermediate goods fluctuations are responsible for the variation of industry. The production of non-durable consumer goods, energy and production of electric power are relatively the most desynchronized compared to industry. Production of electric power leads industrial production. Capital goods, intermediate goods and energy cycle phases are asymmetric – the slowdown lasts shorter and has higher amplitude compared to expansion. During the last crisis occurred the intensified variation of economic activity in Poland.