HOUSE PRICES AND THE ECONOMY

UK house prices more than doubled from 1985 until 1989, with house price inflation over the previous year peaking at 34 per cent in the fourth quarter of 1988. The ratio of house prices to average incomes reached levels which surpassed even those experienced during the 1972-73 house price boom. This sharp increase in housing wealth has been a major factor in the fall in the savings ratio over the past three years. This forecast release examines the prospects for future house price movements, discusses the sources of the recent house price boom and finally considers the possible impact on consumer expenditure.     

Public insurance and private savings: who is affected and by how much?

This paper employs a recently developed instrumental quantile regression method to investigate the effect of Medicaid on household savings across different wealth groups. It finds that the disincentive effect of Medicaid on household savings is heavily concentrated in the middle net‐worth households. In contrast, the effects on the bottom and top net‐worth households are quite small and insignificant. These heterogeneous incentive effects are partly explained by Medicaid asset tests. Our findings hold regardless of whether affluence is measured in terms of wealth or income. They suggest that despite generating substantial crowd‐out for the mean household, Medicaid expansions are unlikely to discourage the savings of the poorest households. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Savings, Personal Wealth and Risk

In this Briefing Paper we examine the underlying determinants of personal savings behaviour to substantiate our view that the recent fall in savings rates does not imply that it must in future bounce back to some more normal level. On the contrary there are good reasons for believing that savings are more likely to go on falling than to rise.
We argue that consumer behaviour should be related explicitly to personal wealth as well as to disposable income. Personal wealth has risen substantially since 1982: the fall in inflation and long-term interest rates has pushed up gilts' prices; the recovery of profits has sparked off a stock market boom; and the value of the housing stock, which is by far the most important asset held by the personal sector, has started to rise again in real terms. This rise in asset values means that, despite a rise in consumption financed by borrowing, the personal sector balance sheet still in a healthy state, particularly when account is taken of the personal savings now held indirectly via pension funds. These have risen rapidly recently, reducing the need for other long-term savings.
The rise in total wealth has increased savers' tolerance of a fall in net liquid assets (bank and building society deposits etc less borrowing). The willingness to hold a smaller (precautionary) stock of net liquid assets may also reflect a perceived reduction in risk. Financial markets have been much more stable over the period since 1975 than over the preceding eight years, and may now be signalling that the period of adjustment to the shocks and disturbances of the 1970s is drawing to an end. The fall in savings is a worldwide phenomenon. As in the UK it is linked to the fall in inflation and may also be connected with the recovery of the world's major stock markets.     

Wealth Accumulation and Factors Accounting for Success

We use detailed income, balance sheet, and cash flow statements constructed for households in a long monthly panel in an emerging market economy, and some recent contributions in economic theory, to document and better understand the factors underlying success in achieving upward mobility in the distribution of net worth. Wealth inequality is decreasing over time, and many households work their way out of poverty and lower wealth over the seven year period. The accounts establish that, mechanically, this is largely due to savings rather than incoming gifts and remittances. In turn, the growth of net worth can be decomposed household by household into the savings rate and how productively that savings is used, the return on assets (ROA). The latter plays the larger role. ROA is, in turn, positively correlated with higher education of household members, younger age of the head, and with a higher debt/asset ratio and lower initial wealth, so it seems from cross-sections that the financial system is imperfectly channeling resources to productive and poor households. Household fixed effects account for the larger part of ROA, and this success is largely persistent, undercutting the story that successful entrepreneurs are those that simply get lucky. Persistence does vary across households, and in at least one province with much change and increasing opportunities, ROA changes as households move over time to higher-return occupations. But for those households with high and persistent ROA, the savings rate is higher, consistent with some micro founded macro models with imperfect credit markets. Indeed, high ROA households save by investing in their own enterprises and adopt consistent financial strategies for smoothing fluctuations. More generally growth of wealth, savings levels and/or rates are correlated with TFP and the household fixed effects that are the larger part of ROA.     

The measurement and structure of household wealth

This paper deals with methodological issues that arise in measuring household wealth. Two prominent American household surveys—the PSID and SCF—rely on different methodological approaches to the measurement of household wealth. In particular, SCF oversamples high-income households and has a far more extensive set of questions. In the top one percent of the wealth distribution, better measures of wealth are related to over-sampling of very wealthy households and the number of questions that are asked. However, one can characterize total household wealth holdings for the overwhelming majority of households with a relatively moderate number of questions. When successive waves of wealth modules are used to compute savings, the verdict on quality is more cautious, in part due to the inherently larger role measurement error plays in any first difference formulation.     

Precautionary and Entrepreneurial Savings: New Evidence from German Households*

Various studies interpret the positive correlation between income risk and wealth as evidence of significant precautionary savings. However, these high estimates emerge from pooling non‐entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs, without controlling for heterogeneity. This article provides evidence for Germany based on representative panel data that includes private wealth balance sheets. Entrepreneurs, who face high income risk, hold more wealth than employees, but this tendency is not because of precautionary motives. Instead, they appear to save more for their old age, because they are usually not covered by statutory pension insurance. The analysis accounts for endogeneity in entrepreneurial choice and heterogeneous risk attitudes.     

Targeted saving by renters for housing purchase in Japan

This paper examines the extent to which wealth accumulation for housing purchase increases household savings and suppresses consumption. The study employs an estimation method based on simultaneous equations with limited dependent variables developed by Nelson and Olson to examine the relationship between wealth accumulation and housing purchase plans, using data relating to young Japanese renters. The estimation results provide evidence that young Japanese households severely reduce their consumption by around 30–40 percent.     

现收现付制养老保险对储蓄的影响——基于中国面板数据的实证研究

本文计算了我国养老保险现收现付制部分财富价值,并运用中国30个省份2002～2007年的相关面板数据考察了我国现收现付制养老保险对于储蓄的影响。研究结果表明,现收现付制养老保险对我国居民消费有显著的正向影响,即存在对储蓄的挤出;养老保险财富对消费的影响小于收入对消费的影响;我国养老保险对储蓄的挤出效应并不小,同时在不断扩大。因此,针对我国储蓄率过高的问题,可以通过扩大养老保险覆盖面等方法增加养老保险财富,促进经济的健康发展。     

IMPACT OF FINANCIAL INCLUSION IN LOW- AND MIDDLE-INCOME COUNTRIES: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF REVIEWS

Financial inclusion programmes seek to increase access to financial services such as credit, savings, insurance and money transfers. Despite a wealth of systematic review evidence, the impacts of financial inclusion are inconclusive. Hence, the first systematic review of systematic reviews was undertaken to synthesize the impacts of financial inclusion interventions on economic, social, gender and behavioural outcomes. Thirty-two systematic reviews were identified. The headline finding is that impacts are more likely to be positive than negative, but the effects vary, and appear not to be transformative in scope or scale, as they largely occur in the early stages of the causal chain. The effects of financial services on core economic and social poverty indicators are small and inconsistent. There is no evidence for meaningful behaviour-change outcomes. The effects on women's empowerment appear generally positive, but they depend upon programme features that are often peripheral to the financial service, and cultural and geographical context. Accessing savings opportunities has small but more consistently positive effects for poor people, and bears fewer downside risks for clients than credit. The inconsistent quality of the primary evidence base that formed the basis of their syntheses raises concerns about the reliability of the overall findings.     

WEALTH EFFECTS AND MACROECONOMIC DYNAMICS

The effect of wealth on consumption is an issue of long‐standing interest to economists. Conventional wisdom suggests that fluctuations in household wealth have driven major swings in economic activity both in the United States and abroad. This paper considers the so‐called consumption wealth effects. There is an extensive existing literature on wealth effects that has yielded some insights. For example, research has documented the relationship between aggregate household wealth and aggregate consumption over time, and a large number of household‐level studies suggest that wealth effects are larger for households facing credit constraints. However, there are also many unresolved issues regarding the influence of household wealth on consumption. We review the most important of these issues and argue that there is a need for much more research in these areas as well as better data sources for conducting such analysis.     

金融危机下流动性过剩问题的分析

在金融危机的大环境下,由于投资储蓄大于消费及贸易顺差不降反升引起的外汇储备继续增加,国家投入到市场中更多的货币,暂时解决了社会财富与货币供求的平衡,但这为今后的流动性过剩的加剧埋下了巨大的隐患,因此政府需要在这个时期就采取措施以适当抑制未来几年内很可能由于流动性过剩加速引起的通货膨胀等不良经济影响。     

STOCK‐FLOW INTERACTIONS,DISEQUILIBRIUM MACROECONOMICS AND THE ROLE OF ECONOMIC POLICY

This paper presents the ‘KMGT’ (Keynes–Metzler–Goodwin–Tobin) portfolio model and studies its stability properties. The approach to macrodynamic modelling taken here extends the KMG model of Chiarella and Flaschel (2000) , focusing in particular on the incorporation of financial markets and policy issues. The original KMG model considered three asset markets (equities, bonds and money) but depicted them in a rudimentary way so that they had little influence on the real side of the model. The only financial market influencing the real side of the economy was the money market (via an LM curve theory of interest). Here Tobin's portfolio choice theory models the demand for each asset in such a way that the total amount of assets that households want to hold equals their net wealth, which is a stock constraint attached to portfolio choice. There is also a flow constraint, that the net amount of assets accumulated (liabilities issued) by one sector must equal its net savings (expenditures). The Tobinian macroeconomic portfolio approach characterizes the potential for financial market instability, focusing on the interconnectedness of all three markets. The paper goes on to study the potential for labour market and fiscal policies to stabilize unstable macroeconomies.     

The Media's Role in Influencing Perceptions of Housing Values and the Resulting Impact on the Macroeconomy

The housing market is a major component of the economy and persistent negative media reports can adversely affect perceptions and expectations of homeowners as to the value of their home. As a result, households reduce their expenditures and increase their savings in an effort to rebuild lost wealth. In the short run the economy suffers and the recession is magnified. This paper demonstrates, through an empirical study, how negative media reports regarding the deteriorating conditions of the national housing market affects what households feel their housing is worth.     

THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH: MEASUREMENT AND MODELS

Abstract. Analysts debating the consequences of a policy change for the wealth distribution may come to different conclusions because of different views about how the distribution should be defined and measured, or about the processes determining the distribution. The aim of this survey is to provide an analytical framework within which such conflicts may be assessed. The first part of the paper discusses conceptual issues in the definition of 'wealth', and compares methods of deriving estimates of wealth distribution. The second, and larger, part of the paper surveys lifecycle and intergenerational models of the distribution of wealth, including a discussion of the role played by inheritance. The presentation is largely theoretical. Indeed, one of the paper's conclusions is that empirical modelling of the wealth distribution is under-developed, at least for the purposes of addressing many topical policy issues.     

Thrifty firms and thriftless households are risks to growth

• ? Structural changes in savings behaviour by households and especially firms in advanced economies in recent years pose threats to global growth. Household savings may have been compressed by high wealth levels, pointing to the risk of a sharp rise in saving and fall in spending if asset prices correct. One positive compared to a decade ago, however, is that US personal saving is less depressed than then.
• ? The bigger risk is arguably on the corporate side, where firms' net savings have risen on average by 2–3 percentage points of GDP since the early 1990s. This has been accompanied by weakening investment, especially in net terms. The reasons behind this are varied – post‐crisis caution, demographic factors and a shift to R&D intensive industry may all have played a role. But a key factor is likely to have been changes in incentives facing executives, leading them to prioritise stock buybacks over investment. This risks creating a long‐term low‐growth feedback loop.

     

ECONOMIC DETERMINANTS OF WORKERS’ RETIREMENT DECISIONS

The landscape for older workers has changed dramatically in recent decades. Governments have made cuts to public pension programs, private pensions have shifted from defined benefit to defined contribution plans, equity and housing markets have been unusually volatile, and workers have experienced declining morbidity and mortality. At the same time, the labor force participation rate for older men and women has been rising over the past two decades, implying later retirement. Are these phenomena related? This paper reviews the large and growing body of literature exploring the economic determinants of workers’ retirement decisions, including public and private pensions, wealth and savings, health and health insurance, and labor demand.     

On the distributional effects of trade policy: Dynamics of household saving and asset prices

This paper studies the effect of trade liberalization on inequality. We develop a theoretical framework that generates economy-wide distributions of wealth and income for different levels of trade protection. The model unambiguously determines the effect of liberalization on inequality; and rationalizes why larger inequality can be the outcome of a welfare enhancing policy, as households reduce their buffer savings when liberalization lowers the price of food. The framework reconciles the increase in inequality, the fall in the value of land, and farmers’ opposition to freer trade, that have featured in different liberalization episodes. We also present empirical support for the model’s predictions.     

SURPLUSES AND DEFICITS

The US economy has twin deficits: internal (the budget deficit) and external (the current account). In sharp contrast, the UK combines a PSBR surplus with a rising current account deficit. Japan and West Germany both enjoy large current surpluses, though in Japan the public sector deficit is narrowing whereas in Germany it is rising. Remarkably, as Figure 1 shows, the present position on the public sector and overseas balances in each of the three major OECD economies and the UK is quite different. Japan is the mirror image of the US: the budget and overseas balances have been moving in the direction of surplus - private sector savings have been more stable. For the UK and West Germany (though again as images of one another) it is movements in private sector savings which have driven the current account. How has this come about?     

PROPERTY RIGHTS AND THE GENERAL THEORY OF EXCHANGE: FREQUENTLY NEGLECTED IMPLICATIONS OF THE DIVISION OF LABOUR AND THE LAW OF COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE

The importance of the division of labour and the law of comparative advantage to the operation of modern economies are well known, but many of the implications of these phenomena are less widely appreciated. This article examines the implications of the division of labour and the law of comparative advantage for the ownership and exercise of property rights and the creation and distribution of wealth. It is argued that a fuller appreciation of these phenomena leads to the conclusion that restraints on trade and redistributory measures infringe private property rights and reduce wealth.