We document a striking empirical regularity: Latin American savings rates are as a rule substantially less procyclical than for OECD countries and in some cases are actually countercyclical. We build a non-representative agent intertemporal macroeconomic model that rationalizes this phenomenon...

We provide a simple framework connecting the distribution of excess savings across households to the dynamics of aggregate demand. Deficit-financed fiscal transfers generate excess savings. The poorest households with the highest MPCs spend down their excess savings the fastest, increasing other...

This paper characterizes the stationary equilibrium of a continuous-time neoclassical production economy with capital accumulation in which households can insure against idiosyncratic income risk through long-term insurance contracts. Insurance companies operating in perfectly competitive...

During the past two decades, the personal saving rate in the United States has fallen from eight percent to below zero. This paper demonstrates that this change represents a major shift in the allocation of newly produced goods. The share of GDP that households consume rose by 6 percentage...

We use the responses of a representative sample of Dutch households to survey questions that ask how much their consumption would change in response to unexpected, permanent, positive or negative shocks to their home value. The average MPC is in the 2.1-4.7% range, in line with econometric...

It depends what we want to measure. Most literature has focused on observed flow of savings (per-period savings as fraction of GDP), which has declined persistently since 1980. Even though this decline means that fewer funds are available for investment in each period, it does not follow that...

Substantial evidence suggests that savings behavior may depart from neoclassical optimization. This article examines the implications of raising the savings rate - whether through social security, retirement plans, or otherwise - for labor supply, where labor supply is determined by behavioral...

With US trade and current account deficits approaching 6% of GDP, some have argued that the country is "on the comfortable path to ruin" and that the required "adjustment'' may be painful. We suggest instead that things are fine: although national saving is low, the ratios of household and...

The high and rising household savings rate in China is not easily reconciled with the traditional explanations that emphasize life cycle factors, the precautionary saving motive, financial development, or habit formation. This paper proposes a new competitive saving motive: As the sex ratio...

National saving rates differ enormously across developed countries. But these differences obscure a common trend, namely a dramatic decline over time. France and Italy, for example, saved over 17 percent of national income in 1970, but less than 7 percent in 2006. Japan saved 30 percent in 1970,...