中国城镇居民预防性储蓄实证研究

本文选择中国城镇居民 1 991— 1 998年间平行面数据 ,采用工具变量和广义矩估计方法 ,对预防性储蓄模型进行估测 ,研究结果表明我国城镇居民存在显著的预防性储蓄动机。本文第二部分对国内外同类研究扼要综述 ,并着重介绍Dynan的预防性储蓄模型。第三部分是对本研究中所采用的数据及估测方法的说明 ,最后给出本研究对中国城镇居民预防性储蓄动机的实证研究结果 ,以及对居民预防性储蓄产生原因所作的理论分析。     

INCOMPLETE FINANCIAL MARKETS,IRREVERSIBILITY OF INVESTMENTS AND FISCAL AND MONETARY POLICY INSTRUMENTS*

In this paper, we analyse the use of fiscal and monetary instruments to improve long‐run welfare when productive investment is irreversible and uncollateralizable and there is no insurance. Only fiat money or government issued bonds provide self‐insurance. We demonstrate that an increase in precautionary savings reduces irreversible productive investment. Hence, subsidies to promote productive but irreversible investment should be financed in such a way that they do not reduce insurance capability. When lump‐sum subsidies are high, a consumption tax is likely to be more redistributive and thus more consumption smoothing than are the other sets of instruments analysed in our model.     

HOUSING DECISION WITH DIVORCE RISK

We build a life‐cycle model of housing decisions under divorce risk that predicts that the recent increase in divorce rates leads to reduced homeownership rates. The risk of a divorce triggers a precautionary‐savings motive. However, this motive is weaker when individuals can invest in owner‐occupied homes because homeowners' higher savings partially substitute for precautionary savings. When young, the larger asset accumulation due to divorce‐risk‐induced precautionary savings enables households to buy homes earlier, whereas the presence of transaction costs leads to reduced homeownership for middle‐aged and older households when divorce risk goes up.     

Precautionary saving under liquidity constraints: evidence from Italy

I empirically investigate precautionary savings under liquidity constraints in Italy using a unique indicator of subjective variance of income growth to measure the strength of the precautionary motive for saving, and a variety of survey-based indicators of liquidity constraints. The main contribution of the paper is twofold. First of all, I attempt to differentiate between the standard precautionary saving caused by uncertainty from the one due to liquidity constraints using an endogenous switching regression approach, which allows me to cope with endogeneity issues associated with sample splitting techniques. Second, I move one step further with respect to previous studies on consumption behaviour by taking explicitly expected liquidity constraints into account. I eventually found the precautionary motive for savings to be stronger for those households who face binding constraints, or expect constraints to be binding in the future. Indeed, a complementarity relation exists between precautionary savings and liquidity constraints.     

Estimating the elasticity of intertemporal substitution taking into account the precautionary savings motive

This paper estimates the elasticity of intertemporal substitution for U.S. aggregate time series data, taking into account the precautionary savings motive. By making use of a recursive utility function, we estimate an Euler equation, via GMM. This procedure leads consumption growth rate to depend on asset returns, and on a time-varying variance, which captures the precautionary motive. When significant, the elasticity of intertemporal substitution estimates ranges from 0.4 to 1.8, which are higher than most of the results found in the literature. Furthermore, the evidence suggests that consumers react to risk; however, the contribution of precautionary motive to consumption growth seems to be limited.     

流动性约束和不确定性状态下的预防性储蓄研究-中国城乡居民的消费特征分析

该文利用我国城乡时间序列数据,对城乡居民的消费特征做了新的探索.我们对引入预期收入增长的对数线性欧拉方程和二阶泰勒近似的欧拉方程进行了估计,结果说明,当期收入仍是决定我国居民消费的主要因素,消费的随机游走假说不成立;城镇居民比农村居民有更强的预防性储蓄动机.1990年代中期以来持续走低的收入增长率直接抑制了消费需求的增长,而仍然偏紧的流动性约束和日益增强的不确定性增大了预防性储蓄动机.     

Quantifying borrowing constraints and precautionary savings

This paper quantifies the effects of precautionary savings. It demonstrates that Zeldes' estimate of excess consumption growth for low asset holders is consistent with a dynamic general equilibrium model with uninsurable endowment shocks when borrowing is constrained at three months' worth of average wage income. I propose a Monte Carlo simulation of the stationary equilibrium as a method of indirectly testing the hypotheses of a no-borrowing specification and a natural debt limit specification. At the estimated borrowing constraint, an increase in endowment shocks within the range of empirical findings can cause a 1.6% increase in the savings rate and a 6.9% increase in capital.     

Growth and financial liberalization under capital collateral constraints: The striking case of the stochastic AK model with CARA preferences

We consider a small-open, collateral-constrained AK economy. We show that the combination of CARA preferences and uncertainty on capital inflows generates long-term growth while the deterministic counterpart does not: long-term growth is entirely driven by precautionary savings, and the asymptotic growth rate of the expected capital stock is increasing in both the risk magnitude and the Arrow–Pratt absolute risk aversion parameters.     

Stochastic growth: a duality approach

We re-examine the representative agent's optimal consumption and savings under uncertainty in the presence of investment constraints using martingale representation and convex analysis techniques. This framework allows us to explicitly quantify precautionary savings which induces a higher average growth rate than in a certainty setup. We provide a closed form solution for a Cobb-Douglas economy. The effect of uncertainty on portfolio selection is analyzed. Consumption growth rate and risk free interest rate exhibit a U-shaped relationship. Uncertainty negatively affects expected consumption growth rate; such a result seems to be supported by empirical evidence.     

Do Consumers Learn from Their Own Experiences?

It is natural to think that a household may learn from its own experiences and subsequently increase savings. This paper tests empirically the hypothesis that Japanese households learn from their experiences of large expenditure and increase their targets for precautionary savings after such experiences. The results imply that households raise their targets for precautionary savings by 4–5 percent of annual income in response to such experiences. Moreover, data are consistent with the argument that targets for savings affect actual savings. Assuming this holds, the results in this paper suggest that consumers may increase their actual savings following large expenditure.     

An overlooked explanation of the declining saving rate

With a socioeconomic model of the determinants of savings that takes into account variables reflecting the abrupt changes in the divorce rate that occurred during the 1970s and the 1980s in the U.S., the increase in women's participation in the labour force, and their greater investrnent in education, we explain part of the measured decline in the saving rate. The uncertainty generated by the increased likelihood of divorces encourages households and women, in particular, to substitute human capital to financial or physical capital for precautionary savings.The authors thank Anna J. Schwartz and Pierre Perron for helpful suggestions and Anne-Marie El Hakim for her dedicated assistance on this project. The comments of the editor and of an anonymous referee contributed to improve the final version of the paper. The project was financed, in part, by a grant of the Quebec FCAR Fund.     

为结婚而储蓄?——来自中国家庭追踪调查①(CFPS)的经验证据

已有研究主要基于性别比失衡的竞争性储蓄动机解释了中国家庭的高储蓄之谜.文章把子女结婚这一自然事件作为处理变量,通过婚前和婚后的家庭储蓄变化识别出"婚姻效应",为竞争性储蓄动机理论和中国家庭的高储蓄之谜提供了微观证据.研究结果发现,在控制个人以及家庭特征后,相对于已婚家庭,未婚家庭储蓄显著更高.在排除地区性差异、教育储蓄动机、预防性储蓄动机和样本匹配等问题之后,未婚比已婚家庭具有更高储蓄水平的结论依然稳健.文章进一步分析识别出了城市和农村异质"婚姻效应"和婚后消费结构的变化,发现"婚姻效应"对不同收入水平的家庭都产生了影响,但"婚姻效应"对低收入家庭的消费抑制更为明显.文章的研究结果丰富了婚姻市场的竞争性储蓄动机理论.     

Stochastic Growth and Factor Income Risk

Abstract. This paper examines the effects of aggregate factor income risk in a tractable version of the stochastic Romer endogenous growth model. Labor supply is endogenous. The presence of labor income risk unambiguously increases savings and growth due to precautionary motives. Households not only underaccumulate but also work less along the balanced growth path of the competitive economy when compared with the Pareto-efficient allocation. The paper also discusses distributive disturbances for the case of inelastic labor supply. Here, growth effects are negative for empirically plausible correlations of the underlying shocks.     

Lobbying, the Composition of Government Expenditures, and the Politics of Fiscal Policy

This paper constructs a one sector growth model to examine the impact of political lobbying on the formation of fiscal policy. The model predicts that lobbying can induce endogenous regime switches, development traps, and a sub-optimal allocation of government expenditures between productive and unproductive ends, leading to long run income losses in the economy. A calibrated version of the model is used to generate estimates of the dynamic social costs of lobbying by estimating the optimal savings rates necessary to induce balanced growth in the economy. Finally, the model predicts that lobbying may influence the growth of government.     

How much does schooling disutility matter?

Studies on structural education choice models are often inconsistent in choosing whether and how to include a disutility of education, especially in an environment with risk and wealth inequality. We show that adding a disutility term to the education decision, a human capital investment option, is equivalent to assuming a relationship between wealth, risk, and education. Utility gain from education is increasing in the riskiness of future consumption. A riskier environment further propels an agent to choose the human capital investment option that maximizes future income. If the degree of risk increases heterogeneously across multiple human capital investment options, risk aversion and the precautionary savings motive can compound or negate each other depending on which option has a greater increase in risk.     

Return migration,uncertainty and precautionary savings

"This paper presents a life-cycle model where migrants determine re-migration and consumption simultaneously in a stochastic environment. Whether precautionary savings of migrants are above or below those of natives is ambiguous in general--the sign depends on the risk in host- and home-country labor markets and on the correlation of labor market shocks. Furthermore, the effect of an uncertain environment on migration and re-migration plans cannot be unambiguously signed for the general case. It depends on the size of the wage differential as well as the relative risk the migrant exhibits in the two labor markets."     

The surprisingly low importance of income uncertainty for precaution

While it is common to use income uncertainty to explain household saving decisions, there is much disagreement about the importance of precautionary saving. This paper suggests that income uncertainty is not an important motive for saving, although households do have other precautionary reasons to save. Using a question from the Survey of Consumer Finances that asks how much households want for precautionary purposes, this paper shows that expressed household preferences, and liquid savings, are much lower than predicted by standard modeling assumptions. Households rarely list unemployment as a reason to save. Perceived income uncertainty does not affect liquid savings or precautionary preferences. Neither does being in an occupation with higher income volatility. Instead, households seem very concerned with expenditure shocks.     

Optimal disaster-preventive expenditure in a dynamic and stochastic model

The purpose of this study is to present an analytical framework for publicly optimal disaster-preventive expenditure. We examine the optimal policy combination of tax rate, disaster-preventive expenditure, and productive government expenditure in a neoclassical growth model, in which natural disasters occur stochastically and partially destroy existing capital. Based on this model, we can decompose the welfare effect of raising preventive expenditure into three effects: the damage reduction, crowding out, and precautionary effects. By identifying these marginal benefits and costs, we obtain the policy conditions that maximize household welfare. Furthermore, we show that optimal prevention is increasing in disaster probability, and by using a numerical example, we show that there is an inverse U-shaped relationship between the expected growth rate and disaster probability.     

The effect of precautionary saving on consumption in Sweden

Uncertainty concerning future income lowers consumption. This is often called the precautionary demand for savings. In this paper the existence of precautionary savings. In this paper the existence of precautionary saving is investigated using Swedish data for the years 1973–1992. As there are no variables for consumers' uncertainty a proxy is used. Assuming an underlying distribution of attitudinal data, a variance series is derived. Including the proxy in different specifications of the consumption function, indication of precautionary saving can be found. As a result, no uncertainty would raise consumption by 4.9%.     

Precautionary savings by natives and immigrants in Germany

This article analyses the savings behaviour of natives and immigrants in Germany. It is argued that uncertainty about future income and legal status (in case of immigrants) is a key component in the determination of the level of precautionary savings. Using the German dataset, we exploit a natural experiment arising from a change in the nationality law in Germany to estimate the importance of precautionary savings. Using a Difference-in-Differences (DiD) approach, we find a significant reduction in savings and remittances for immigrants after the easing of citizenship requirements, compared to the pre-reform period. Our parametric specification shows that introduction of the new nationality law reduces the gap in marginal propensity to save between natives and immigrants by up to 80%. These findings suggest that many of the differences in terms of the savings behaviour between natives and immigrants are driven by the savings arising from the uncertainties about future income and legal status rather than cultural differences.