Saving behaviours: first wave baby boomers

The combination of lower saving rates in the 1980s, high consumer debt, and the impact of the baby boomer generation moving into retirement in an uncertain economic environment creates increasing concern for the financial state of the American household. This study explored the saving behaviours of baby boomers. The family management-systems model was used as the framework for the study. Research questions included whether saving behaviours were related to income, education and presence of dependent children. Data are from the 1983 National Survey of Consumer Finances. The 1980s represent a decade critical to first wave baby boomers and their continued influence on American society. A study of their saving behaviours provides information necessary to help plan for their future needs. Frequency counts and cross-tabulations of demographic data provide a profile of saving behaviours and attitudes toward risk and liquidity. Marital status and presence of children were significantly related to reasons for savings. Income, marital status, education and presence of children indicated a significant effect on net worth and attitude towards risk. Income and presence of children affected attitude towards liquidity. Income level was the strongest predictor of net worth as a measure of saving behaviours.     

A note on the influence of saving behaviors on economic growth

The Kaldor model describes the dynamics of economic growth over time. Many works showed that a large variety of qualitative dynamics can be produced depending on the economic assumptions. This work provides conditions to mark boundaries during boom and bust cycles, investigating how saving behaviors of workers and shareholders and elasticity of substitution between capital and labor influence the growth dynamics of non‐developed, developing and developed countries considering general and specific technologies of production. The results obtained can be used by policy‐makers to increase the lower level an economy can reach during boom and bust periods and reduce fluctuations.     

Savings and Investment Behaviour in Britain: More Questions than Answers

Since the late 1970s successive British governments have been instrumental in cultivating a savings-friendly environment. Changes have been orchestrated in two ways: first by developing a regulatory structure in which the emphasis has been on safeguarding consumer's savings; and second by developing new types of accounts which include significant tax incentives. Despite considerable government intervention, consumer savings and investment behaviour has not received a great deal of attention from academic researchers. Some of the reasons for this lack of interest will be assessed prior to analysing two large scale datasets to ascertain levels of savings and account holding behaviour in Britain. The data indicates that while the vast majority of the British population are savings account holders, levels of regular saving are very low and savers frequently give few, if any, motives for their savings strategies.     

外汇储备与经济增长:理论与实证分析

利用格兰杰因果检验方法,对我国外汇储备与经济增长关系进行实证分析。从检验结果来看,短期和长期外汇储备的增长源于经济增长,但外汇储备只能在短期内促进经济增长。由于外汇储备对经济增长的促进作用只是短期行为,要真正促进经济增长还需要依靠其他政策综合发挥作用。     

Revisiting FDI-led growth hypothesis: the role of sector characteristics

Does foreign direct investment (FDI) lead to higher growth? What type of FDI really works? In this paper, we disaggregate FDIs based on their technological characteristics and investigate which kind of FDI leads to output growth. The results for the sample of OECD countries during the period 1985–2012 indicate that FDI inflows to Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) using and producing manufacturing and service sectors (ICT-based), non-ICT using and producing manufacturing and service sectors (non-ICT-based) and other sectors (non-ICT-other) play no role in contributing to economic growth. However, we provide evidence that absorptive capacities of host countries work through ICT-based FDI inflows. Only if the host countries have sufficient level of human capital, financial resources and technological infrastructure, ICT-based FDI will foster economic growth. The results are robust to controlling missing values, studying the subsample of emerging market economies and consideration of endogeneity.     

Work versus windfall: An exploration of saving on subsequent purchase

Previous research has examined the effects of discounts and promotions on the future performance of a brand or store. However, no attempts have been made to explore how a consumer psychologically accounts for the way a savings is obtained or how that accounting process affects subsequent purchase decisions. This research employs an experimental approach to test the hypothesis that buyers will spend more (save less) of a savings that they obtain from a windfall gain than an equivalent amount obtained from a worked-for savings. Results are generally supportive of the hypothesis, revealing that consumers do treat savings differently depending on how they are obtained. This finding appears to hold over a wide range of saving magnitudes.     

Geburtenwende in Deutschland – was ist dran und was sind die Ursachen?

In comparison to other European countries, Germany is among those with the lowest birth rate and the highest median age of the population. Yet recently there are signs of a trend change in German fertility. For a decade now, birth rates in larger German cities have been on the rise, and this new baby boom has spread to smaller urban regions, leading to a trend change in overall fertility. The main years of this trend change are 2009 through 2011, parallel to the economic and financial crises of that time and following in the wake of important changes in German family policy in 2007/2008.     

Gross national accumulation

Low birth rates, longevity, family disintegration, and other factors have reduced the size of the average household. At the same time household size is shrinking, new housing offers twice the floor space per occupant of old housing. Small households are inefficient users of space, utilities, furniture, and equipment. As these factors converge, the result is over consumption of durables and vast stockpiles of possessions just awaiting disposal when the baby boom generation passes on. The rightful heirs to these possessions are themselves accumulators, and will most likely have little use for what is left to them. What does the future hold for consumption, savings, and demand for housing? Booming flea markets, bigger homes as warehouses, a decline in consumption, or an epidemic of display and collection? Public policies have limited leverage on private behavior.     

中国：高储蓄、高投资和高增长研究

本文探讨了中国经济发展过程中长期存在的高储蓄、高投资和高增长并存的现象。文章认为：人口红利、工业化、城市化和市场化改革，是造成中国经济“三高”的实体经济因素和体制因素，这些因素并不能由宏观经济政策予以调整。文章最后提出了大力发展直接融资的改革对策。     

Prices Paid in Grocery Markets: Searching Across Stores and Brands

Using a large sample of prices paid for 21 homogeneous grocery products available in several brands in each of 16 markets, we simulate the search behavior of a consumer following different shopping strategies using as many as four supermarkets. We find that price search can lead to substantial savings. Brand switching can generate savings at least as large as visiting multiple stores to find the lowest price for a single brand. Buying a private label is usually a better way to save than any amount of search for low prices on national brands. A case study in a small metropolitan area grocery market yields results substantially the same as the simulation results.     

Does Marketing Activity Contribute to a Society’s Well-Being? The Role of Economic Efficiency

Does the level of marketing activity in a country contribute to societal well-being or quality of life? Does economic efficiency also play a positive role in societal well-being? Does economic efficiency also moderate or mediate the marketing activity effect on societal well-being? Marketing activity refers to the pervasiveness of promotion expenditures and number of retail outlets per capita in a country. Economic efficiency refers to the extent to which the economy is unhampered by corruption, burdensome government regulation, and a large informal economy. We used secondary data from the World Bank and other statistical sources to answer these questions. Our study findings suggest that both marketing activity and economic efficiency contribute positively to societal well-being, and that economic efficiency plays more of a mediator than moderator role between marketing activity and societal well-being. The public policy implication of this study is that increases in marketing activity and economic efficiency in countries characterized as low on both dimensions should significantly increase the quality of life in those countries.     

Does the Euro affect the dynamic relation between stock market liquidity and the business cycle?

Does Eurozone equity market liquidity affect economic growth? If so, how does the Euro currency affect the dynamic relationship between growth and stock market liquidity (macro-liquidity relation) of the Eurozone? We address these questions using data from ten Eurozone countries and the UK. The findings document the predictability role of liquidity proxies on economic growth, suggesting that stock market liquidity influences economic growth. The results reveal that liquidity increases substantially after a structural break realized around the Euro's introduction in Europe, and in all countries except Portugal we find that liquidity improvement coincides with higher growth. During periods of high exchange-rate volatility between currencies (which tend to be periods of high uncertainty and economic convergence), growth becomes highly affected by stock market liquidity movements.     

Globalisation,trade, and growth: A macroeconomic perspective

On the basis of economic theory, what effects can globalisation be expected to have on trade and growth? Does the empirical evidence support this? What developments will the next phase of globalisation bring?     

Riding the Wave: Consumer Economics and the Consumer Movement in the United States

The development and current state of the scholarly field of Consumer Economics in the United States is discussed in relation to the Consumer Movement and other forces that have impinged upon it. Membership in the American Council on Consumer Interests, the scholarly organization for consumer economists, is used as one measure of the size and health of the field. Other forces impinging on the field that are discussed include: the baby boom induced increase in the demand for college education; the subsequent decline in the support for higher education as higher education costs rose throughout the 1980s and 1990s; the decline in the Federal Government's support for consumer research and consumer education; and the development of competing organizations.     

Housing Activity and Consumer Spending

The current expansion has seen record-high levels of transactions in housing, extraordinary growth in the aggregate value of owner-occupied housing, and large increases in the amount of funds realized from the refinancing of mortgage debt. Many analysts thus have pointed to the strong housing market and rising home prices as a major pillar supporting recent economic growth and have expressed concern that a contraction in housing activity and values could pose a significant risk to consumer spending and real economic growth. This paper explores the channels by which the housing market may affect consumer spending and assesses the potential risk from a softening in the housing market. Our assessment is that while a housing slowdown by itself may slow consumer spending some, it is probably insufficient to precipitate a downturn without some additional shocks outside of the sector. JEL Classification E21,R21     

Competition, Market Structure and Job Turnover

Does internationalization mean increased reallocation of employment among plants and thus higher adjustment costs? This paper studies the reallocation of jobs among plants in the Swedish economy 1986–97 using micro data. It turns out that the rate of job turnover is high in industries with high rates of innovation and employment growth, and low in concentrated industries with limited competition. However, we find no evidence for the view that increased openness to international competition would increase job turnover. In fact turnover is lower in export oriented industries where foreign ownership is frequent.     

Putting the Cart before the Horse? Re-Examining the Relationship between Domestic Savings and Economic Growth in Selected Sub-Saharan African Countries

In addition to the standard Granger causality, this paper employs the Toda–Yamamoto approach and instantaneous causality test to examine the causal relationship between domestic savings and economic growth in 10 sub-Saharan African countries utilizing time series data. Findings from both the standard Granger causality and Toda–Yamamoto approach are consistent and robust only in five countries where domestic savings and economic growth are completely independent in three countries. For the remaining two, causality runs from savings to growth. However, for the other five countries, findings produced from both causality tests are grossly inconsistent and mixed leaving us under a quandary although the Toda–Yamamoto test is often reliable on account of its ability to avoid misleading results associated with the asymptotic nature of the standard Granger causality test. Our findings further reveal an instantaneous unidirectional causality from domestic savings to economic growth for only Benin, Mali, and South Africa suggesting that savings-led growth is rapid for these countries. We conclude based on our findings that the myriad of ‘evidence’ in earlier studies on savings-growth causality should be treated with caution given that methodological differences can produce misleading results with the potential of misdirecting policy.     

Are Young People Becoming More Risk Averse? An Analysis of Factors Contributing to the Rise in Precautionary Savings Among Young Adults

Since the late 1980s, young people aged 18–34 have increasingly stated that their primary reason for increasing their saving rate has been to protect themselves against uncertain future times. The rate of increase in “precautionary” savings exceeds that of all other age groups, and has occurred against a backdrop of declining real income, a tepid economic recovery from the Great Recession of 2008–09, a tightened credit environment, and changing household demographics. This study considers the impact of these and other elements on young adults’ decisions to save for precautionary purposes, and considers what possible impacts these developments might have for broader consumption and production trends in the U.S economy.     

Loosening the belt: on the effects of goal‐conflict situations on regular savings

This paper examines the effect of implementation intentions on consumers' success in pursuing conflicting saving–spending goals. Surveys of participants in a community‐based savings programme were conducted to test whether the forming of implementation intentions in specific action plans facilitate the pursuit of the focal savings goal. The intervention had no effect in facilitating the savings goal, suggesting that goal conflict undermines goal commitment above and beyond the influence of commitment mechanisms. Inquiring into the reasons for not saving within the implementation intention group, we found that conflict with spending goals emerged as a partial mediator explaining subjects' failure to enact their savings intentions. Implications for community‐based savings programmes are also discussed.     

Do digital governments foster economic growth in the developing world? An empirical analysis

The research has largely documented favorable economic outcomes of investing in Information Communication Technologies (ICTs). Does implementation and adoption of ICT in the public sector also lead to favorable economic gains? The answer to this question has received little attention. The available evidence is largely country-specific from the developed world. This study contributes to the empirical literature on ICT-growth nexus by analytically exploring and empirically testing the relationship of e-government with economic growth of 122 developing economies over the period 2003–2015. The empirical analysis is based on Fixed Effects, Random Effects, and System Generalized Method of Moments (GMM). The results show that an implementation of an e-government in developing economies causes a robust positive impact on economic growth. This finding is shown to be robust to different specifications, to different econometric techniques and to the endogeneity problem.