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.     

不确定性与中国城镇居民储蓄率的实证研究

本文从不确定性收入、社会保险的参与情况对中国城镇居民面临的不确定性进行了界定,并使用2006年中国综合社会调查数据(CGSS2006)检验了不确定性对城镇居民储蓄率的影响。基于稳健OLS和可行广义最小二乘法(FGLS)的估计结果表明:不确定性收入与城镇居民储蓄率之间存在着显著的正相关关系,参加养老保险和医疗保险可以显著降低城镇居民的储蓄率。分位数回归的结果进一步显示:在各分位处,不确定性收入均对城镇居民储蓄率产生了显著的正向影响,并且影响强度随着储蓄率分位的上升而下降;而在储蓄率分布的0.5及以上中高分位处,参加养老保险可以显著降低城镇家庭的储蓄率;在储蓄率分布的顶端,参加医疗保险也与城镇居民储蓄率之间表现出显著的负相关关系。     

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.     

An analysis of the Medical Savings Account as an alternative retirement savings Vehicle

Personal savings as a percentage of disposable income have dropped steadily since the early 1980s. Savings have continued to decline in 1999, as the savings rate—savings as a percentage of after-tax income—dropped to a record low of minus 0.7% in April 1999, according to the Department of Commerce. The study finds that MSA-type accounts are a viable supplement to retirement savings, but should not be used as a replacement for existing retirement alternatives given their current structure. Results show that future health care expenditures are an important factor in the success or failure of MSAs as supplemental retirement accounts. Medical Savings Accounts are currently eligible for long-term care expenses, and to the extent that such expenses occur during retirement, MSA balances could be used to pay for retirement expenses. In that respect the accounts already capture the characteristics of a retirement savings account. A comparison of the Roth IRA with the MSA as defined by the 1996 HIPAA legislation is also conducted.     

寿险对消费内需的作用机制研究

采用预防性储蓄研究框架,通过建立纳入不确定因素的效用函数模型,分析了寿险产品中年金产品和非年金产品影响消费内需的机制及效果,并对2010年中国各地区及世界主要国家的寿险业发展和消费内需水平进行了横向比较。本文的研究表明,寿险业对于消费内需的作用机制在于:通过"风险汇聚"和"损失分担"的机制,消除居民面临的损失、收入、支出以及寿命的不确定性,使居民对未来形成稳定的预期,从而降低居民的预防性储蓄,增加现期消费。因此,寿险业对于消费内需具有重要的拉动作用。     

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.     

Compulsory Savings: Efficiency and Redistribution On the Interaction of Means Tested Basic Income and Public Pensions

In the presence of means tested basic income for old age, households will tend to reduce precautionary savings to an inefficiently low level. We explore how this might serve as a justification for a compulsory public pension system. In a representative agent framework with two income types, compulsory savings are found to be Pareto-improving up to a point. Beyond that point, increases in contribution rates simply result in increasingly regressive (implicit) taxation. Similar results are found for pay-as-you-go pensions. On the basis of our model we argue that the introduction of a funded pension component may help the German pension system to cope with demographic change more efficiently.     

Economic policy uncertainty and firm tax avoidance

We find strong evidence that firms reduce cash effective tax rate when economic policy uncertainty heightens. Firms also engage in more aggressive forms of tax avoidance including long-term tax planning or shelters. Cash holdings attenuate the negative effect of policy uncertainty on cash effective tax rate, especially for financially constrained firms. The cash tax savings are retained for reinvestments rather than dividend payouts. Our findings suggest that policy uncertainty exacerbates external financing frictions, which in turn induces precautionary motives of tax avoidance.     

Macroeconomic volatility and external imbalances

Does macroeconomic volatility/uncertainty affects accumulation of net foreign assets? In OECD economies over the period 1970–2012, changes in country specific aggregate volatility are, after controlling for a wide array of factors, significantly positively associated with net foreign asset position. A standard open economy model with time varying macroeconomic uncertainty can quantitatively account for this relationship. The key mechanism is precautionary motive: more uncertainty induces residents to save more, and higher savings are in part channeled into foreign assets. Data and theory suggest that volatility is an important determinant of the medium/long run evolution of external imbalances in developed countries.     

Beliefs and actions: expectations and savings decisions by older Americans

To understand the interaction of savings behavior, pension fund participation and expectations of retirement well being, we ask two questions. Are expected pension benefits a substitute for accumulated savings in replacing preretirement income? Are individuals’ expectations concerning their retirement standard of living realistic based on their accumulated savings and pension plan participation? First-wave data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) are analyzed using a probit regression. The results are consistent with the idea that pension benefits are substitutes for saving and that accumulated savings have a significant impact on the expected standard of living but pension plan participation does not.     

How important is intra-household risk sharing for savings and labor supply?

While it is recognized that the family is a risk-sharing institution, little is known about the quantitative effects of this source of insurance on savings and labor supply. In this paper, we present a model where workers (females and males) are subject to idiosyncratic employment risk and where capital markets are incomplete. A household is formed by a female and a male, who decide on consumption, savings and labor supplies. In a calibrated version of our model we find that intra-household risk sharing has its largest impact among wealth-poor households. While the wealth-rich use mainly savings to smooth consumption across unemployment spells, wealth-poor households rely on spousal labor supply. For instance, for low-wealth households, average hours worked by wives of unemployed husbands are 8% higher than those worked by wives of employed husbands. This response in wives’ hours makes up 9% of lost family income. We also study consumption losses upon an unemployment spell, precautionary savings and the crowding out effects of the public unemployment insurance program on the extent of risk sharing within the household.     

The Explanatory Power and the Forecast Performance of Consumer Confidence Indices for Private Consumption Growth in Turkey

In this study, we assess empirically whether consumer confidence indices contain information about future private consumption growth in Turkey. To this end, we estimate models for quarterly total, durable, and nondurable consumption growth with and without sentiment indicators. We evaluate in-sample forecasts and one-step-ahead out-of-sample forecasts from recursive ordinary least squares (OLS) estimates. We also test permanent income and precautionary savings hypotheses with our results. We use overall indices of CNBC-e and Turkstat-CBRT Surveys, and Consumer Expectations Index (CEI) and Propensity to Consume Index (PCI) from the CNBC-e Survey as sentiment measures. We show that the lagged values of consumer sentiment have explanatory power on consumption growth. However, when used in conjunction with other economic variables such as real labor income, real stock price, real interest rate, and exchange rate, only CNBC-e for total consumption, and CBRT and PCI for nondurable consumption provide independent information about future consumption growth. Similarly, the gains in out-of-sample forecasts are observed under the absence of other variables and disappear in almost all cases following their inclusion to the estimations. Finally, we find no clear evidence for either precautionary savings motive or permanent income hypothesis on the link between consumer sentiment and future total consumption changes.     

Precautionary Saving of Chinese and U.S. Households

We employ a model of precautionary saving to study why household saving rates are high in China and low in the United States. The use of recursive preferences gives a convenient decomposition of saving into precautionary and nonprecautionary components. Over 80% of China's saving rate and nearly all U.S. saving arises from the precautionary motive. The difference between U.S. and Chinese household income growth rates is vastly more important than income risk for explaining the saving rates. The key mechanism is that precautionary savers have target wealth‐to‐income ratios, and rapid income growth necessitates high saving rates to maintain the ratio.     

Model Misspecification, the Equilibrium Natural Interest Rate, and the Equity Premium

This paper analyzes the natural rate of interest and the equity premium in a nonlinear model where agents are uncertain over both future technology growth and the future course of monetary policy. I show that model uncertainty, and notably uncertainty on the future course of monetary policy, can give rise to a sizable precautionary savings motive. This result is potentially problematic for both the estimation of the natural rate and its use as a policy indicator. Monetary uncertainty can also contribute to amplify the equity premium, and to account for its apparent, positive link with inflation.     

The Slow Adjustment of Aggregate Consumption to Permanent Income

This paper investigates the relationship between aggregate consumption and permanent income using a new approach to the estimation of cointegrated systems that builds on Stock and Watson's common stochastic trends representation. The permanent and transitory movements in aggregate income and consumption are estimated directly using the Kalman filter and are allowed to be correlated. This approach avoids any implicit restriction that permanent income be as smooth as consumption. Instead, permanent income appears to be relatively volatile, with consumption adjusting toward it only slowly over time. These results provide a clear rejection of the standard version of the permanent income hypothesis and are suggestive of alternative theories of consumption behavior such as habit formation or precautionary savings.     

信用卡、风险应对与城镇家庭股市参与

信用卡市场的发展有利于家庭平滑消费,但是否会影响家庭的投资决策尚缺少事实检验。基于中国家庭金融调查(CHFS)2011和2013年的调查数据,本文首次检验了信用卡对城镇家庭股市投资的影响。研究发现:(1)控制家庭财富、融资渠道、社会资本等特征,持有信用卡在边际上促进了家庭的股市参与率,股市投资额取决于信用额度。(2)中国信用卡市场的发展,并未像流动性约束理论预测的可以平滑消费,反而刺激了家庭风险性资产的配置,最终提高了储蓄率。原因在于,中国家庭更多地将信用卡作为应对未来短期突发性风险的金融工具,从而在当期将更多资产配置在风险资产上,以实现资本积累。使用信用卡数目、信用额度等多种衡量方式,并采用工具变量法(IV)和面板数据固定效应模型等解决内生性问题后,该结论稳健。该研究有助于理解信用卡在中国家庭投资决策的作用,并为流动性约束或有限股市参与假说提供中国经验。     

国企“混改”与企业金融资产配置

本文利用2010～2017年中国沪深A股非金融类上市公司面板数据,考察了国企“混改”对企业金融资产配置的影响,并重点分析了国企“混改”过程中企业金融资产配置的动机。结果显示,非国有股东参股促进了国有企业的金融资产投资。机制检验发现,非国有股东参股通过治理效应路径和融资约束路径共同影响了国有企业的金融资产配置行为,具体表现为非国有股东参股带来的监督治理效应和融资约束强化效应均增强了国有企业配置金融资产的预防性储蓄动机,进而促使国有企业增加金融资产投资。上述研究结果表明,非国有股东参股推动的国有企业金融资产投资并非出于短期利益追逐,而是为了平滑企业投资进行的预防性储蓄。本文研究对于如何通过深化混合所有制改革引导企业“脱虚向实”有一定的借鉴意义。     

Worries and plans as individuals approach retirement

The primary objective of an employment-based retirement plan is to provide a secure and adequate income for workers throughout retirement. In the defined contribution (DC) framework, asset accumulation is a means to the end, but not the end. Drawing retirement income from savings and paying for health care expenses in retirement are the two issues that concern individuals the most as they approach retirement. This article examines the attitudes of near-retirees regarding these risks and their plans for managing them. The author discusses how DC plan design can have a major impact on how individuals convert their retirement savings to retirement income; differences in survey responses between those who have consulted a financial advisor or other financial professional and those who have not; and the role of trust in implementing advice.     

Generalizing the permanent-income hypothesis: Revisiting Friedman's conjecture on consumption

Friedman's contribution to the consumption literature goes well beyond the seminal permanent-income hypothesis. He conjectured that the marginal propensity to consume out of financial wealth shall be larger than out of “human wealth”, the present discounted value of future labor income. I present an explicitly solved model to deliver this widely noted consumption property by specifying that the conditional variance of changes in income increases with its level. A larger realization of income not only implies a higher level of human wealth, but also signals a riskier stream of future labor income, inducing a higher precautionary saving, and thus giving rise to Friedman's conjecture. Appropriately adjusting human wealth for income risk, I show that Friedman's conjecture may be formulated as a “generalized” permanent income hypothesis. I further show that Friedman's conjecture captures the first-order effect of stochastic precautionary savings. Finally, I propose a natural decomposition of the optimal saving rule to formalize various motives for holding wealth as emphasized in [Friedman, M., 1957. A Theory of the Consumption Function. Princeton University Press, Princeton].     

Determinants of the Savings and Fixed Asset Holdings of Turkish Migrants in Germany

This paper investigates the determinants of the bank savings and fixed assets of Turkish migrants residing in Germany. We find that migrants with firmer roots in Germany are more likely to hold savings and fixed assets in Germany, and those with stronger links to Turkey are more likely to hold savings and fixed assets in Turkey. As expected, income is a positive determinant of savings and fixed assets in both countries. Although age has a positive impact on savings and fixed assets in Turkey, it has a negative impact on savings in Germany. These results shed new light on Turkish migrants' short- and long-term savings in Turkey and Germany.