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This paper develops a time series model for aggregate consumption to predict the U.S. personal saving rate. It then uses the model to test whether there has been a structural break in consumption behavior because of the 2008 financial crisis. Before the crisis, the personal saving rate was trending downwards. However, in 2008 there was a significant rise in the saving rate that continued until the end of 2012, suggesting a permanent change in household behavior. To assess this issue formally, the unknown parameters of the model are estimated using data for 1961Q1-2007Q4, a period which precedes the crisis. The model is then used to predict the saving rate from 2008Q1 onwards and to assess whether the rise in the saving rate after 2008 was due to sizable, but transitory, income/wealth shocks or to changes in the underlying elasticities between saving and its determinants (hence structural). The statistical evidence suggests there was no structural break in the household saving behavior, implying that the rise in the saving rate during 2008-2012 was caused by the negative shocks to income, employment and wealth. This result explains why the saving rate resumed its decline in 2013, as real disposable income, employment and net worth recovered. Assuming that the real growth in these determinants remains strong, the estimated model predicts continued negative pressures on the current account deficit and further external imbalances attributable to the U.S. household sector.
A sharp increase in the real interest rates in the U.S. in the 1980s was expected to induce a higher personal saving rate. Actually, between 1981 and 1983 the personal saving rate fell from 7.5 percent to 5.4 percent and for the 1985-1988 period it had averaged only 4 percent even though real interest rates have remained high. We argue that one possible explanation for this negative relation between interest rates and the personal saving rate is the large fraction of wealth, especially financial wealth, held by persons over 65 years old (this group has received more than 50 percent of all interest income in the U.S. during this period). Life cycle theory suggests, as we demonstrate, that the wealth effect created by an increase in the rate of interest reduces the savings of old persons and raises savings of the young and hence the effect on aggregate savings depends on the age distribution in the population.
Governments and corporations may chip in, but around the world houshold saving is the biggest factor in national saving. To better understand why saving rates differ across countries, this volume provides the most up-to-date analyses of patterns of household saving behavior in Canada, Italy, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Each of the six chapters examines micro data sets of household saving within a particular country and summarizes statistics on patterns of saving by age, income, and other demographic factors. The authors provide age-earning profiles and analyses of the accumulation of wealth over the lifetime in a clear way that allows quick comparisons between earning, consumption, and saving in the six countries. Designed as a companion to Public Policies and Household Saving (1994), which addresses saving policies in the G-7 nations, this volume offers detailed descriptions of saving behavior in all G-7 nations except France.
In this paper I analyze the pattern of saving behavior by U.S. households, using the Consumer Expenditure (CEX) Survey. The analysis' main goal is to explain the decline in aggregate personal saving in the United States in the 1980s. I estimate a typical' saving-age profile and identify systematic movements of the profile across different cohorts of U.S. households. In addition, I consider different definitions of saving and control for a number of factors that figure in popular explanations fo the decline in saving. The main results can be summarized as follows: 1) the typical' saving-age profile presents a pronounced hump' and peaks around age 60; 2) this typical' age profile was, at least during the 1980s, shifted down for those cohorts born between 1925 and 1939. This is consistent with the low level of aggregate saving because these cohort were, in the 1980s, in that part of their life cycle when saving is highest; 3) this results holds for various definition of saving with one notable exception; the decline is less pronounced when expenditure on durables is considered as saving; and 4) some other popular explanations of the decline in saving are rejected by the data, including those appealing to the presence of capital gains on real or financial assets.
This paper analyzes the determinants of savings in the world economy, and discusses why saving ratios have been so uneven across countries. A distinction is made between private and government savings, using panel data for 36 countries, from 1970 to 1992. In particular, it is assumed that government savings are not completely exogenous, and respond to both economic and political (strategic) determinants, along the lines of the recent literature on the political economy of macroeconomic policy. Using instrumental variables estimation methods it is found that per capita growth is one of the most important determinants of both private and public savings. The results indicate that government-run social security systems affect private savings negatively. In addition, the results provide some support for the political economy perspective to government finances, which evidences a different underlying process determining public savings. Public savings tend to be lower in countries with higher political instability. Higher government savings crowd out private savings, but in a less than proportional fashion. Higher levels of foreign savings - i.e. reductions in the current account balance - are associated with lower domestic (both private and public) saving rates, although the degree of offset is also less than proportional. The degree of financial development turns out to be another important determinant of private savings. The results are mixed regarding the role of borrowing constraints - a topic deserving additional research attention.
This paper develops a time series model for aggregate consumption to predict the U.S. personal saving rate. It then uses the model to test whether there has been a structural break in consumption behavior because of the 2008 financial crisis. Before the crisis, the personal saving rate was trending downwards. However, in 2008 there was a significant rise in the saving rate that continued until the end of 2012, suggesting a permanent change in household behavior. To assess this issue formally, the unknown parameters of the model are estimated using data for 1961Q1-2007Q4, a period which precedes the crisis. The model is then used to predict the saving rate from 2008Q1 onwards and to assess whether the rise in the saving rate after 2008 was due to sizable, but transitory, income/wealth shocks or to changes in the underlying elasticities between saving and its determinants (hence structural). The statistical evidence suggests there was no structural break in the household saving behavior, implying that the rise in the saving rate during 2008-2012 was caused by the negative shocks to income, employment and wealth. This result explains why the saving rate resumed its decline in 2013, as real disposable income, employment and net worth recovered. Assuming that the real growth in these determinants remains strong, the estimated model predicts continued negative pressures on the current account deficit and further external imbalances attributable to the U.S. household sector.