This paper provides an introduction to the field of evolutionary economics with emphasis on the evolutionary theory of household behavior. It shows that the goal of evolutionary economics is to improve upon neoclassical economics by incorporating more realistic and empirically grounded...

In this paper, I find (1) that Japan showed massive and persistent current account surpluses from at least 1981 and until at least 2011, (2) that Professor Ronald McKinnon was correct, at least in the case of Japan, and that these large and persistent current account surpluses were due primarily...

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 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...

This paper investigates empirically why Japan's household savings rate fell in the 1990s. We constructed an economic model consisting of two types of household: unconstrained life-cycle households and liquidity-constrained households. Unconstrained households generally save, but...

We study structural change in a simple, two-sector endogenous growth model and show that the presence of commodity-specific consumption externalities can be a source of structural change. When the degrees of consumption externalities are different between different goods, the two sectors grow at...

In this paper, I conduct an international comparison of the financial health of households using data on household wealth and indebtedness for the Group of Seven (G7) countries and show that, even though household borrowings in Japan were the highest among the G7 countries, at least until 2000,...

In this paper, we present data on trends over time in domestic saving rates in twelve economies in developing Asia during the 1966-2007 period and analyze the determinants of these trends. We find that domestic saving rates in developing Asia have, in general, been high and rising but that there...

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 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...