We investigate partial insurance and group risk sharing in extended family networks. Our approach is based on decomposing income shocks into group aggregate and idiosyncratic components, allowing us to measure the extent to which each is insured, having accounted for public insurance programs....

In this paper, we analyze the determinants of corporate saving in the form of changes in the stock of cash for 11 Asian economies using firm-level data from the Oriana Database for the 2002-2011 period. We find some evidence that cash flow has a positive impact on the change in the stock of...

This paper discusses three alternative assumptions concerning household preferences (altruism, self-interest, and a desire for dynasty building) and shows that these assumptions have very different implications for bequest motives and bequest division. After reviewing some of the literature on...

In this paper, we present data on trends over time in government debt financing in Japan since 2010 with emphasis on the importance of foreign holders and speculate about the determinants of those trends. We find that Japanese government securities were held primarily by domestic holders until...

In this paper, I analyze the causes of the prolonged slowdown of the Japanese economy in the 1990s and find that the stagnation of investment, especially private fixed investment, was the primary culprit. I then investigate the causes of the stagnation of household consumption during the 1990s...

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...

We analyze the impact of population aging on Japan's household saving rate and on its public pension system and the impact of that system on Japan's household saving rate and obtain the following results: first, the age structure of Japan's population can explain the level of, and past and...

The theory of intertemporal choice predicts that the cross-sectional variance of the marginal utility of consumption is equal to its own lag plus a constant and a random component. Using general preference specifications and some assumptions about the nature of the random component, we provide...

This paper considers data quality issues for the analysis of consumption inequality exploiting two complementary datasets from the Consumer Expenditure Survey for the United States. The Interview sample follows survey households over four calendar quarters and consists of retrospectively...

In this paper, we use Japanese micro data to examine what characteristics borrowing-constrained households have and whether borrowing constraints have an important influence on household consumption behavior. We identify borrowing-constrained households using three different indicators, some of...