Prudence and precautionary saving

Households save income for various reasons, including the need to plan for the future, the intention to leave a bequest, and the desire to guard against unforeseen expenditures and income fluctuations. Although it is widely believed that prudent individuals engage in precautionary saving, the extent of such saving is not well understood. This paper develops a model of saving with an explicit role for the Leland-Kimball measure of prudence. Estimation of the model using household-level data from Italy suggests an average value of relative prudence near 4 or 5, with approximately 15 to 36 percent of total saving being precautionary. The authors are grateful to an anonymous referee for helpful comments.     

THE PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE: A HIGH‐RISK PRINCIPLE1

The precautionary principle ‐ recently added to the French constitution and part of the draft Constitution of the European Union ‐ aims to protect the public from the risks associated with scientific and technological advance by allowing governments to ban any activity deemed to involve risks, even if those risks are unproven. In reality, the precautionary principle itself poses enormous risks of losing the advantages of projects that are banned, of preventing the development of the means by which risk may be ameliorated and of threatening the private property rights that provide the most effective environmental safeguard.     

The Effects of Consumption Variability on Saving: Evidence from a Panel of Muscovite Households**

Due to the high uncertainty characterizing them, transition economies provide an extraordinary opportunity to test the precautionary saving hypothesis. This paper represents an attempt to exploit this opportunity. We use a panel of 2,346 Muscovite households, over the 12 months of 1996, to construct two time‐varying measures of consumption growth variability, which we use as proxies for households’ perceived uncertainty. We then regress household saving on these uncertainty variables using a GMM‐system estimator. We find that both uncertainty measures generally have a positive and statistically significant effect on saving. This result, which is robust to the use of different measures of saving, supports the precautionary saving hypothesis.     

增补预防性储蓄的托宾-索洛模型

非预期的预防性储蓄通过资产替代产生稳态名义货币增长率(或稳态通货膨胀率)对稳态人均资本(或稳态人均产出)的非线性门槛效应。门槛的临界值是非预期预防性储蓄与实际货币增加量比率的递减函数。非线性机制取决于非预期预防性储蓄与实际货币增加量比率和人均实际货币余额-人均资本比率与通货膨胀率、人均资本边际产出的相关性。     

PRECAUTIONARY SAVING: A REVIEW OF THE EMPIRICAL LITERATURE

Standard macroeconomic models show that uncertainty plays a significant role in consumption and saving decisions under rather mild conditions, namely the convexity of the marginal utility of consumption. Increased uncertainty generates a positive extra saving, the so‐called ‘precautionary saving’. Although this hypothesis has been tested by a large number of authors, both at macro and micro level, the empirical results are not conclusive, and the main conclusion than can be drawn is that there is neither consensus on the intensity of that motive for saving, nor on the most appropriate measure of uncertainty. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the empirical literature discussing the main controversial issues and the different approaches followed by the studies addressing empirically the test of precautionary saving.     

应用缓冲储备模型实证检验我国居民的储蓄行为

通过应用缓冲储备模型，实证检验我国居民的教育、医疗、住房等开支的不确定性与储蓄之间的相关性，我们发现，我国居民的预防性储蓄行为不仅显著，而且以目标储蓄率为被解释变量的模型，能够比以储蓄水平为被解释变量的模型更好地解释我国居民的“预防性储蓄”动机。建立完善的医疗保障体系、改革教育体制是降低我国巨额储蓄的必经之路。     

施工企业如何加强合同风险管理

通过对施工合同中存在的建筑材料、人工费用上涨引发的成本上升、工程款支付、工程变更、违约责任等风险的分析,进而针对不同的风险采取不同的防范措施,施工单位应在合同签订时控制风险从而规避风险。     

企业员工培训风险及其防范策略分析

员工培训能给企业带来收益,同时也会带来一定的培训风险。通过对培训实施前、实施中和实施后三个阶段中所产生风险的主要原因进行分析,并提出了相关的防范策略。     

试论电力企业财务风险防范的基本途径

电力企业是自主经营、自负盈亏的经济实体。当前，电力企业资金需求量大与资金获取能力相对软弱的矛盾，使电力企业资产负债率越来越高，让电力企业面临着巨大的财务风险。因此，防范和降低财务风险已经成为电力企业的迫切需求。文章从不同的角度对电力企业财务风险的防范措施进行了研究，以期使电力企业更健康地发展。     

清单计价模式下招投标阶段工程造价之控制

随着工程量清单计价模式下招投标制度的推行,招投标阶段对工程建设造价控制的作用也随之凸显出来;针对建设各方对招投标阶段工程造价控制的认识偏差,以招投标对工程造价的影响为出发点,指出了招投标过程中造价控制的关键点及相关风险,并给出了相应的防范和控制措施。     

Consumer demand

Consumer spending has expanded consistently for seven quarters. The initial momentum in 2012 came from a pickup in real income growth, driven by strong job creation, lower inflation and the generous uprating of social benefits. This momentum appears to have stalled in 2013H1, although the picture is complicated by higher earners having delaying income to take advantage of the reduction in the top rate of income tax from 50% to 45%. Yet despite the slowdown in real incomes, spending has held up because confidence has improved and households have reduced their precautionary saving; the savings ratio fell back from 6.8% in 2012 to average 5.2% in 2013H1…     

Life-cycle hypothesis, propensities to save, and demand for financial assets

In recent decades, the United States has not only experienced great economic changes in the financial markets but also undergone tremendous social and demographic transformations. Based on the life-cycle theory of consumption and saving, Keynes’s concept of marginal propensity to save, and Friedman’s theory of asset demand, this study shows that changes in sociodemographic conditions have significant impacts on the saving behavior of individuals in the financial markets. Findings indicate that the amounts of savings held in financial institutions for transactions, precautionary, and speculative motives differ substantially among individuals with divergent socio-economic characteristics. Regression results also show that individuals with different demographic backgrounds differ greatly in their propensities to save and hold financial assest with different degrees of liquidity and risk. The author is grateful to an anonymous referee for many valuable comments and to Thomas Palumbo, Michael Davern, Stephanie Shipp, and Arthur Kennickell for their suggestions. This paper reports the results of research and analysis undertaken by Census Bureau staff. It has undergone a more limited review than offical Census Bureau publications. This report is released to inform interested parties of research and to encourage discussion.     

Health insurance and savings over the life cycle—a semiparametric smooth coefficient estimation

Individuals save for future uncertain health care expenses. This is less efficient than pooling health risk through insurance. The provision of comprehensive health insurance may raise welfare by providing the missing market to smooth out consumption through the life cycle. We employ a semiparametric smooth coefficient model to examine the effects of the introduction of the National Health Insurance in Taiwan in 1995 on savings and consumption over the life cycle. The idea is to estimate the coefficients of health insurance which vary with age. Our results suggest that younger households are more sensitive to the risk reductions, and that they demonstrate a greater response in the reduction of their precautionary saving. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

社保基金偿付能力风险理论分析与实证检验

欧盟针对保险公司偿付能力实行的新政"Solvency Ⅱ"已经开始在欧盟范围内运行,由此掀起了全球商业保险与社会保险偿付能力风险的变革,以抵御国际金融危机给保险业带来的巨大威胁。我国社保基金管理由于在资金来源和运营管理上与欧盟国家存在很大区别,且国内学者还没有高度重视偿付能力风险问题。因此,从理论上对社保基金偿付能力风险进行概念界定,提出相关指标体系,并结合社保基金收入与支出的时间序列建立ARMA模型,对偿付能力风险进行预测具有重要意义。这对充实社保基金风险管理理论,为相关管理机构提供更加合理的偿付能力风险管理方法,保护全体参保人的权利,降低国家的财政压力有一定的帮助。     

不完全资本市场与国际贸易赤字

本文通过带有风险资产的两期一般均衡模型研究了不完全资本市场和一国国际贸易之间的相关性。研究表明,当市场是完全的或者没有风险资产时,一国的国际贸易是平衡的,但是当资本市场不完全时会出现贸易不平衡。如果是国家间的不完全市场,由于一些国家的收入对风险资产的回报具有更强的相关性,使得国家间的贸易出现不平衡;如果资产在一个国家内是不完全的,则由于完全市场国家具有更强的国内分散收入变化风险的能力,会减少预防性储蓄,导致更大的贸易赤字。一些国际数据基本支持本文的研究结论。     

Why the UK saving ratio is unlikely to flip anytime soon

• ? With inflation down and wages rising, the outlook for consumer spending in the UK is brightening. But should households opt to boost savings, the mood could darken.
• ? We think a meaningful rise in the saving ratio from its recent record lows is unlikely, though. Austerity may be easing, but the drag from fiscal policy is still set to limit households’ savings resources, while the durability of the current expansion may reduce the motivation for precautionary saving.
• ? What's more, any rise in interest rates on savings accounts will probably be even slower than the modest pace we expect for Bank Rate. And with the demographic shift toward an older, less thrifty, population, the appetite of households to save looks set to remain subdued.

     

The impact of political risk on FDI exit decisions

Do political risks drive exit decisions by multinational companies (MNC)? What mechanisms can protect a multinational subsidiary in a host country that is characterized by weak institutions and high political risks? Using multinational plant-level data for Russia in the period 2000-2016 and applying the Cox proportional hazard model, we find significant effects from elevated host-country political risk when we compare the year of entry to the year of exit. MNCs are particularly sensitive to problems associated with law, order, and social conditions in Russia and the presence of the military in politics in the home country. Institutional similarity does not reduce the hazard of exits, and MNCs from high-risk countries exit less when home-country risk increases. Subsidiaries from countries that have imposed sanctions on Russia are less likely to exit, though sanctions interact with host-country risks, making them more severe. Being large and being part of a greenfield project help subsidiaries to build resistance against host-country political risks. These findings provide empirical evidence that support our conclusions regarding foreign direct investment volatility in countries with high risk.     

美、欧央行监管比特币的做法及其对我国的启示

2015年12月5日,中国人民银行、银监会、证监会等五部委联合印发了《关于防范比特币风险的通知》,这对于保护社会公众的财产权益,保障人民币的法定货币地位,防范洗钱风险,维护金融稳定,具有重要的现实意义。美、欧央行对比特币的监管已先行一步,对我国具有一定的启示和借鉴。本文简要介绍了我国比特币交易情况及监管现状,归纳总结了美、欧央行监管比特币做法,提出我国应借鉴美、欧央行做法制定应急预案,防范比特币风险。     

Employers protected by at-will statements

Requiring job candidates to sign at-will statements before they're hired will not protect all employers from wrongful discharge claims. This protections process, however, can reduce the number of risks brought on by employee termination.