In this paper, we analyze a variety of data on saving motives, bequest motives, and bequest division from the "Comparative Survey of Savings in Japan and the United States", a binational survey conducted in 1996 by the Institute for Posts and Telecommunications Policy of the Ministry of Posts...

In this paper, we conduct a U.S.- Japan comparison of the importance of retirement saving and of the determinants thereof using micro data from the "U.S.- Japan Comparison Survey of Saving," a binational household survey conducted in 1996 by the Institute for Posts and Telecommunications Policy...

We study the optimal consumption behavior under the set of assumptions associated with the permanent income hypothesis: quadratic utility function, discount rate equal to the interest rate. We modify the condition that savings be equal to zero at infinity, and show that the simple linear...

East Asia and Latin America have diverged in several dimensions in the past there decades. This paper compares households saving behavior in two countries in each region (Mexico, Peru, Thailand and Taiwan).

For the first time, this paper uses a panel data set, the British Household Panel Survey, to analyse saving behaviour in Britain. One objective is to test the precautionary saving hypothesis, according to which households save to self-insure against uncertainty. Our results show that in...

This paper investigates if labour income uncertainty, particularly as related to the development and diffusion of fixed and short-term work contracts, may have played a role in determining the recent decline of the marginal propensity to consume of Italian households. We analyse this issue in...

This paper investigates the usefulness of Italian consumer surveys as estimation and forecasting tool over the period 1982-2003. To this end, standard consumption equations are estimated and then compared, in terms of in-sample and out-of-sample predictive ability, with corresponding models...

In this paper we analyze a large sample of individual responses to six lottery questions. We derive a simultaneous estimate of risk aversion and the time preference discount rate per individual. This can be done because the consumption of a large prize is smoothed over a larger time period. It...