流动性约束、不确定性与中国居民消费

本文运用中国 1 96 1— 1 998年间数据 ,通过测试罗伯特·霍尔 (RobertHall)的消费函数及其扩展模型 ,分析了流动性约束与不确定性在中国居民消费行为演变中所起的作用。实证研究表明 ,随着中国经济改革的不断深入 ,中国居民消费行为在 2 0世纪80年代早期发生了结构性转变。流动性约束型消费者所占比重的上升以及不确定性的增大 ,造成了中国目前的低消费增长和内需不足。此外 ,我们还发现 ,流动性约束和不确定性之间的相互作用进一步强化了两者对居民消费的影响 ,导致了居民消费水平和消费增长率的同时下降。

Liquidity Constraints,Uncertainty and Household Consumption in China

This paper investigates the changing roles played by liquidity constraints and uncertainty in accounting for the dynamism of Chinese household consumption behaviour. Starting from the Euler equation based model of Robert Hall, a framework encompassing an array of consumption models is developed and applied to Chinese data over the period from 1961 to 1998. The empirical results reveal a regime shift in early 1980s and imply that increases in the proportion of liquidity constrained consumers and increased uncertainty in the post reform period are responsible for the extremely low consumption or high savings in China. Moreover, it is found that interactions between liquidity constraints and uncertainty reinforce each other's effects and lead to declines in both the level and growth of consumption.