China's growth is characterized by massive capital accumulation, made possible by high and increasing domestic savings. In this paper we develop a model with the aim of explaining why savings rates have been high and increasing, and we investigate the general equilibrium effects on capital...

The design of pension schemes is crucial in determining savings behavior. The impact of pension schemes on saving rates across countries remains to be an intriguing empirical question considering the complicated nature of the relationship between saving patterns and pension wealth. This paper...

Using a model where households can save in either a safe asset or in an illiquid, tax-advantaged pension, we assess the extent to which those who recently reached the state pension age in the UK have saved optimally for retirement. The policy environment specified closely matches that prevailing...

The Economic Council’s Road Map for Tax Reform laid the groundwork for a greater discussion of the consumption tax principle as a basis for taxation in Canada. In his paper, Jack M. Mintz continues this discussion by setting out the case for and against a consumption tax. He argues that the...

This paper explores the consequences of rising returns to human capital investment on the personal savings rate. Over the past two decades, the return to college education has increased relative to high school education leading economists to argue the presence of 'skill biased technological...

This paper investigates the quantitative importance of different savings motives on the distributions of wealth and consumption and aggregate capital accumulation by solving an overlapping generations model with intragenerational heterogeneity. Agents differ in age, ability, earnings shocks, and...

This paper explores the consequences of skill biased technological progress on the savings rates. The literature, both theoretical and empirical, on the causes and consequences of skill biased technological progress in the past few years has burgeoned considerably. So has the literature on...

We evaluate the importance of the precautionary saving motive by relying on a direct question about precautionary wealth from the 1995 and 1998 waves of the Survey of Consumer Finances. In this survey, a new question has been designed to elicit the amount of desired precautionary wealth. This...

This paper studies the effect of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on saving behaviour. Two important characteristics of HIV result in opposing forces on savings: mortality increases, which reduces savings, and long-term illness risk increases, which enhances savings. We use a two period life-cycle model...

We develop the approach of Gokhale, Kotlikoff amp; Sabelhaus (1996), based on the lifecycle model of savings, to decompose the differences in the national saving rates between the UK, US and Italy. Our work suggests that the US saving rate is lower principally because Americans on average retire...