The Time‐Varying Volatility of Earnings and Aggregate Consumption Growth

Time‐varying specifications for the conditional variance of earnings of U.S. households are estimated with micro data over the period 1968–92. The cross‐sectional mean of the estimated time‐varying uncertainty of individual households has a significant impact on aggregate consumption growth. As such, aggregate precautionary savings may be more important than what is suggested by the results of estimating standard regression equations for aggregate consumption growth that incorporate only lagged income growth and the real interest rate. The estimation of a buffer stock consumption model with time‐varying earnings uncertainty suggests that the precautionary savings motive is cyclical and has become less important in the 1980s.     

Household Saving in Developing Countries: First Cross-Country Evidence

Although most studies have relied on domestic or private sectorsaving data, this article uses household data available fromthe U.N. System of National Accounts for a sample of 10 countries.Household saving functions are estimated using combined time-seriesand cross-country observations in order to test households'responses to income and growth, rates of return, monetary wealth,foreign saving, and demographic variables. The results showthat income and wealth variables affect saving strongly andin ways consistent with standard theories. Inflation and theinterest rate do not show clear effects on saving, which isalso consistent with their theoretical ambiguity. Foreign savingand monetary assets have strong negative effects on householdsaving, which suggests the importance of liquidity constraintsand monetary wealth in developing countries.     

The Impact of Converting to a Consumption Tax When Saving Propensities Vary: An Empirical Analysis

It has been recognized that conversion of an income tax to a consumption tax can increase aggregate saving even if each household maintains a constant propensity to save. The reason is heterogeneity: the variation in the propensity to save among households. How much of an increase in saving is an empirical question. Using the best available (but not wholly adequate) U.S. data, we estimate that the increase may be as much as 10% of saving. New data stratified by age would be necessary to obtain a more reliable estimate.     

Precautionary saving and partially observed income

I propose an intertemporal precautionary saving model in which the agent's labor income is subject to (possibly correlated) shocks with different degrees of persistence and volatility. However, he only observes his total income, not individual components. I show that partial observability of individual components of income gives rise to additional precautionary saving due to estimation risk, the error associated with estimating individual components of income. This additional precautionary saving is higher, when estimation risk is greater. Compared with a precautionary agent who is otherwise identical, but ignores estimation risk, the rational agent consumes less at the beginning of his life, but consumes more later, because of larger wealth accumulated from savings for estimation risk. The utility cost of ignoring estimation risk is also quantified in closed form.     

Comparative precautionary saving under higher-order risk and recursive utility

Measuring and comparing the precautionary saving motive rest almost exclusively on the expected utility framework, and only focus on income risk or coefficients of the Arrow–Pratt type. We generalize the standard approach by characterizing comparative precautionary saving under recursive utility for increases in income risk and increases in risk on the saving return, including higher-order risk effects. We express the comparisons in terms of precautionary premia. In addition, we define a new class of preference coefficients, and derive the associated conditions to predict a stronger precautionary motive. The coefficients provide a detailed picture of the preferences sustaining precautionary saving and could be useful in applications.     

The Determinants of Household Saving in China: A Dynamic Panel Analysis of Provincial Data

In this paper, we conduct a dynamic panel analysis of the determinants of the household saving rate in China using a life cycle model and panel data on Chinese provinces for the 1995–2004 period from China's household survey. We find that China's household saving rate has been high and rising and that the main determinants of variations over time and over space therein are the lagged saving rate, the income growth rate, (in many cases) the real interest rate, and (in some cases) the inflation rate. However, we find that the variables relating to the age structure of the population have the expected impact on the household saving rate in only one of the four samples. These results provide mixed support for the life cycle hypothesis as well as the permanent income hypothesis, are consistent with the existence of inertia or persistence, and imply that China's household saving rate will remain high for some time to come.     

Domestic or global imbalances? Rising income risk and the fall in the US current account

When default leads to exclusion from financial markets, the implied loss of consumption smoothing opportunities is more costly when income volatility is high. A rise in income risk thus makes default less attractive, allowing creditors to relax borrowing limits. I show how, in an open economy, this endogenous financial deepening may reduce aggregate foreign assets in response to a rise in individual income risk, against the precautionary savings intuition. Conditions for this depend on whether default constrains complete or uncontingent contracts. The post-1980 rise in US household income risk strongly reduces foreign assets when domestic markets are complete or world interest rates low.     

城镇居民预防性储蓄动机强度的再认识

国内需求的萎靡不振已成当前经济学界的一个热点问题,而城镇居民储蓄的高速增长与此紧密相连,预防性储蓄强度在居民储蓄行为中起着重要作用.本文基于理性消费者最大化其一生效用的假设,推导出衡量居民预防性储蓄动机强度的新公式.随后,用30个省际地区1985-2010年的年度数据进行实证分析,结果显示,1998年前后城镇居民存在着明显的预防性储蓄强度的结构变化,这种转变对于政府决策具有重要意义.     

Optimal consumption and asset allocation with unknown income growth

Recent empirical evidence supports the view that the income process has an individual-specific growth rate component [Baker, M., 1997. Growth-rate heterogeneity and the covariance structure of life-cycle earnings. Journal of Labor Economics 15, 338-375; Guvenen, F., 2007b. Learning your earning: Are labor income shocks really very persistent? American Economic Review 97, 687-712; Huggett, M., Ventura, G., Yaron, A., 2007. Sources of life-cycle inequality. Working paper, University of Pennsylvania]. Moreover, the individual-specific growth component may be stochastic. Motivated by these empirical observations, I study an individual's optimal consumption-saving and portfolio choice problem when he does not observe his income growth. As in standard income fluctuation problems, the individual cannot fully insure himself against income shocks. In addition to the standard income-risk-induced precautionary saving demand, the individual also has learning-induced precautionary saving demand, which is greater when belief is more uncertain. With constant unobserved income growth, changes in belief are not predictable. However, with stationary stochastic income growth, belief is no longer a martingale. Mean reversion of belief reduces hedging demand on average and in turn mitigates the impact of estimation risk on consumption-saving and portfolio decisions.     

“活在当下”还是“未雨绸缪”？——地震对中国城镇家庭储蓄和消费习惯的长期影响

全球有27亿人口生活在地震带上,但现有经济学文献关于地震对家庭储蓄和消费行为的影响研究并不充分。本文认为,相比“未雨绸缪”,“活在当下”假说更适合刻画地震经历对家庭储蓄和消费习惯的长期影响,并提出如下经济机制:地震经历在长期内并不会影响家庭的收入水平,但它带来的死亡风险和心理冲击会使地震带居民更多地进行享受型消费,从而降低家庭储蓄率。基于国家统计局的城镇住户调查数据,本文实证发现:户主5岁以后经历的地震频率越多,其家庭储蓄率显著越低;户主经历的地震频率显著提高了家庭的享受型消费支出(如文化娱乐、养生保健、美容奢侈品支出等),但是对家庭可支配收入和非享受型消费没有显著影响。本文的研究结论有助于理解地震对城镇居民储蓄和消费习惯的长期影响,并为制定激发居民消费潜力的有关政策提供启示。     

人口结构、经济增长与中国居民储蓄率:基于迭代模型(OLG)和省级面板数据的实证研究

本文认为次贷危机的根本原因在于全球储蓄率的失衡。为此,本文建立了一个三期迭代模型,解释了人口结构因素和收入增长因素对中国居民储蓄率的影响,并基于实证研究,对中国居民储蓄率在未来中期波动状况进行了预测分析。     

One Size Fits All? Monetary Policy and Asymmetric Household Debt Cycles in U.S. States

I investigate the nonlinear effects of monetary policy through differences in household debt across U.S. states. After constructing a novel indicator of inflation for the states, I compute state‐specific monetary policy stances as deviations from an aggregate Taylor rule. I find that the effectiveness of monetary policy is curtailed during periods of large household debt imbalances. Moreover, a common U.S. monetary policy does not fit all; it may have asymmetric effects on the economic performance across states, particularly at times of high dispersion in the household debt imbalances, as it may have been the case around the Great Recession.     

How sensitive are consumer expenditures to retail energy prices?

There is growing evidence that the primary effect of energy price shocks on the U.S. economy involves a reduction in consumer spending. We quantify the direct effect on real consumption of unanticipated changes in discretionary income, shifts in precautionary savings, and changes in the operating cost of energy-using durables. The possibility of asymmetries in the response of real consumption to energy price shocks is also considered. We demonstrate that linear models are consistent with the symmetric behavior of real consumption in 1979 (when energy prices increased sharply) and in 1986 (when they fell sharply). It is shown that historically energy price shocks have been an important factor in explaining U.S. real consumption growth, but by no means the dominant factor.     

Capital Inflows and the U.S. Housing Boom

We estimate an open‐economy vector autoregressive (VAR) model to study the effect of capital‐inflow shocks on the U.S. housing market. We look at different external shocks that generate capital inflows to the U.S., in particular “saving‐glut” shocks and foreign monetary‐policy expansions. The shocks are identified with theoretically robust sign restrictions derived from an open‐economy dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model. Our findings suggest that capital inflows that result from “saving‐glut” shocks have a positive and persistent effect on real house prices and real residential investment.     

Using Financial Accounting Data to Examine the Effect of Foreign Operations Located in Tax Havens and Other Countries on U.S. Multinational Firms' Tax Rates

This paper investigates the effect tax havens and other foreign jurisdictions have on the income tax rates of multinational firms based in the United States. We develop a new regression methodology using financial accounting data to estimate the average worldwide, federal, and foreign tax rates on worldwide, federal, and foreign pretax book income for a large sample of U.S. firms with and without tax haven operations. We find that on average U.S. firms that disclosed material operations in at least one tax haven country have a worldwide tax burden on worldwide income that is approximately 1.5 percentage points lower than firms without operations in at least one tax haven country. Our results also show that U.S. firms face a 4.4% current federal tax rate on foreign income whether or not they have tax haven operations. Finally, we find that U.S. firms with operations in some tax haven countries have higher federal tax rates on foreign income than other firms. This result suggests that in some cases, tax haven operations may increase U.S. tax collections at the expense of foreign country tax collections.     

Statement of the Financial Economists Roundtable: Corporate Tax Reform

Corporate tax reform has been a controversial issue in the U.S. for several years, particularly as U.S. companies have accumulated cash in lower‐tax overseas subsidiaries, while some have used “inversions” to establish overseas corporate domiciles. Two features of U.S. corporate taxation stand out: 1. U.S. corporate income tax rates are the highest in the industrialized world. The federal rate is 35%; and, when combined with state taxes, it averages 39%, as compared to an OECD average of 24%. 2. U.S. corporations pay U.S. tax on their worldwide income, but can choose to avoid indefinitely corporate tax on foreign profits by not repatriating them. Neither feature is present in most other Western countries, where the norm is a “territorial” system that taxes companies only on their domestic profits. The Trump administration has proposed to cut U.S. corporate tax rates to 20%, thereby bringing them down to the OECD average, and to adopt a territorial tax regime like those found in most other Western nations. In this statement signed by 31 senior financial economists, the authors recommend cutting U.S. corporate tax rates, but retaining the current system of taxing the worldwide profits of U.S. companies (while giving them credit for taxes paid in overseas jurisdictions). Once U.S. rates drop to the international average, the economists point out, U.S. companies would have much less incentive under the worldwide system to use transfer pricing schemes to shift their profits to low‐tax jurisdictions than under the proposed territorial alternative. Indeed, under the current system, if the lower rates under consideration are enacted, the location of a company's business activity (including the firm's underlying intellectual property) would not affect its taxation. Along with lower corporate tax rates, the economists also recommend that Congress limit or remove the corporate option to defer the taxation of offshore profits and provide a schedule for repatriating off‐shore funds, using the inducement of the now lower rates as well as the possibility of a “tax holiday.”     

Precautionary Saving and Endogenous Labor Supply with and without Intertemporal Expected Utility

We analyze precautionary saving behavior in a framework with labor and nonlabor income risks, an endogenous supply of labor, and a representation of preferences that disentangles attitudes toward risk, attitudes toward intertemporal substitution, and ordinal preferences for consumption and leisure. This preference structure allows us to disentangle and to describe in an intuitive way the different forces that determine precautionary saving “in the small” and “in the large.”     

美国高收入阶层收入变动与股市关系的实证分析

美国收入分配自1980年代出现了加剧不平等的趋势,塞斯等人利用税收资料建立一个长期的高收入阶层的收入份额时间序列,利用其数据建立计量模型考察收入变动与股市指数的关系,发现股市是造成收入份额增长的一个因素,两者存在一定的正相关关系。同时,通过对不同收入组别与股指的相关系数的比较,发现收入阶层越高,其受股市影响程度越大,这也验证了收入越高其在股市中的投资比重越大,其收入增长来源越多地依赖于股市。通过时变参数模型度量了股指对收入份额的弹性系数的动态过程,发现自1981年开始弹性系数略有上升,其原因可能与税率下降及投资热情有关。     

一个有远见的税收制度应当关注未来的税基——特朗普新税法的成本分析及政策建议

20世纪50年代以来,美国企业所得税税率持续下降,政府税收收入也处于较低水平。2017年,特朗普新税法的实施大幅度降低了企业所得税税率,导致政府税收损失远超预期。然而,新税法实施后,美国企业投资和长期经济增长并没有明显改善。本文认为,一个国家经济效率主要取决于税基而非税率,美国政府应通过税收制度改革,增加对企业投资和研发投入的激励,从而扩大税基,实现经济的长期改善。     

Estimates of economic rates of return for the U.S. pharmaceutical industry, 1976–1987

Estimation procedures are designed to consider features of publicly-available financial accounting information which allegedly compromise its use to estimate economic internal rates of return. These procedures, which focus on cashflows rather than conventional accounting income measures, are used to investigate the relative profitability of the U.S. pharamaceutical industry. Results indicate that pharmceutical returns exceed returns for comparable U.S. industrial firms during the period encompassed by the study. Differences for these comparisons are substantially less than what is implied by an uniformed use of accounting information, however. In particular, differences in implied internal rates of return of 2.1% to 3.8%, whereas differences in accounting rates of return are 4.0% to 5.6%. Results are robust for a wide variety of assumptions about industry growth rates and investment payout profiles, characteristics which potentially cause accounting-based return measures to differ from underlying internal rates of return.