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, 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,...

This paper estimates a household saving rate equation for India and Korea using long-term time series data for the 1975-2010 period, focusing in particular on the impact of the pre-marital sex ratio on the household saving rate. To summarize the main findings of the paper, it finds that the...

In this paper, we first provide a brief exposition of the simplest version of the selfish life cycle model or hypothesis, which is undoubtedly the most widely used theoretical model of household behavior in economics, and then survey the literature on household saving behavior in Japan (with...

In this paper, we analyze the wealth accumulation and saving behavior of the retired elderly in Italy using micro data from the "Survey of Italian Households' Income and Wealth," a panel survey of households conducted every two years by the Bank of Italy. We find that, on average, the retired...

The selfish life-cycle model or hypothesis is, together with the dynasty or altruism model, the most widely used theoretical model of household behavior in economics, but does this model apply in the case of a country like Japan, which is said to have closer family ties than other countries? In...

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...

This paper estimates a household saving rate equation for India and Korea using long-term time series data for the 1975-2010 period, focusing in particular on the impact of the pre-marital sex ratio on the household saving rate. To summarize the main findings of the paper, it finds that the...

In this paper, we analyze the saving motives of European households using micro-data from the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS), which is conducted by the European Central Bank. We find that the rank ordering of saving motives differs greatly depending on what criterion is used to...

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...