We study the effects of permanent and temporary income shocks on precautionary saving and investment in a ""store-or-sow"" model of growth. High volatility of permanent shocks results in high precautionary saving in the safe asset and low investment, or a ""volatility trap."" Namely, big savers...

Financially closed economies insure themselves against current-account shocks using international reserves. We characterize the optimal management of reserves using an open-economy model of precautionary savings and emphasize several results. First, the welfare-based opportunity cost of reserves...

A common assumption in standard economic models is that agents are risk-averse and prudent, and it is often argued that prudence is necessary to generate precautionary savings. This paper shows that prudence is not necessary to generate precautionary savings in small open economy models with...

In this paper we assess the implications of precautionary savings for global imbalances by considering a world economy model composed by the US, the Euro Area, Japan, China, oil-exporting countries, and the rest of the world. These areas are assumed to differ only with respect to GDP volatility...

We study the effects of permanent and temporary income shocks on precautionary saving and investment in a ""store-or-sow"" model of growth. High volatility of permanent shocks results in high precautionary saving in the safe asset and low investment, or a ""volatility trap."" Namely, big savers...

Policymakers in oil-exporting countries confront the question of how to allocate oil revenues among consumption, saving, and investment in the face of high income volatility. We study this allocation problem in a precautionary saving and investment model under uncertainty. Consistent with data...