This paper investigates why high income households in the United States save on average more than low income households in cross-section data. The three explanations considered are (1) age differences across households, (2) temporary earnings shocks, and (3) the structure of transfer payments....

Economists make extensive use of two separate descriptions of private saving behavior: the life-cycle (or overlapping generations) model, and models with intergenerational altruism. Analysis of the two frameworks is quite different, as are many of the long-run policy implications. This paper...

This paper examines entrepreneurship in order to analyze, first, the degree to which the opportunity to start or own a business affects the household's saving behavior and the implication of this behavior for the distribution of wealth and, second, the relationship between the extent of...

We consider an environment in which individuals receive income shocks that are unobservable to others and can privately store resources. We provide a simple characterization of the efficient allocation in cases in which the rate of return on storage is sufficiently high or, alternatively, in...

This paper examines the empirical relation between financial market development, as measured by the stock market, and gross private savings rates in 16 emerging markets over 1982-1993. With data from all 16 countries, there is evidence of a significant positive relation between savings and stock...

We find that precautionary saving accounts for only a modest (less than 3 percentage point) increase in the aggregate saving rate, at least for moderate and empirically plausible parameter values. This finding is based on a quantitative analysis of a reasonably parameterized version of the...