Income Uncertainty and Household Savings in China

Income Uncertainty and Household Savings in China PDF Author: Mr.Marcos Chamon
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1455211702
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 36

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Book Description
China’s household saving rate has increased markedly since the mid-1990s and the age-savings profile has become U-shaped. We find that rising income uncertainty and pension reforms help explain both of these phenomena. Using a panel of Chinese households covering the period 1989-2006, we document that strong average income growth has been accompanied by a substantial increase in income uncertainty. Interestingly, the permanent variance of household income remains stable while it is the transitory variance that rises sharply. A calibration of a buffer-stock savings model indicates that rising savings rates among younger households are consistent with rising income uncertainty and higher saving rates among older households are consistent with a decline in the pension replacement ratio for those retiring after 1997. We conclude that rising income uncertainty and pension reforms can account for over half of the increase in the urban household savings rate in China since the mid-1990s as well as the U-shaped age-profile of savings.

Income Uncertainty and Household Savings in China

Income Uncertainty and Household Savings in China PDF Author: Mr.Marcos Chamon
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1455211702
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 36

Get Book Here

Book Description
China’s household saving rate has increased markedly since the mid-1990s and the age-savings profile has become U-shaped. We find that rising income uncertainty and pension reforms help explain both of these phenomena. Using a panel of Chinese households covering the period 1989-2006, we document that strong average income growth has been accompanied by a substantial increase in income uncertainty. Interestingly, the permanent variance of household income remains stable while it is the transitory variance that rises sharply. A calibration of a buffer-stock savings model indicates that rising savings rates among younger households are consistent with rising income uncertainty and higher saving rates among older households are consistent with a decline in the pension replacement ratio for those retiring after 1997. We conclude that rising income uncertainty and pension reforms can account for over half of the increase in the urban household savings rate in China since the mid-1990s as well as the U-shaped age-profile of savings.

Income Uncertainty and Household Savings in China

Income Uncertainty and Household Savings in China PDF Author: Marcos Chamon
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 39

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Book Description
China's household saving rate has increased markedly since the mid-1990s and the age-savings profile has become U-shaped during the 2000s. We find that rising income uncertainty and pension reforms help explain both of these phenomena. Using a panel of Chinese households covering the period 1989-2006, we document that strong average income growth has been accompanied by a substantial increase in income uncertainty. Interestingly, the permanent variance of household income remains stable while it is the transitory variance that rises sharply. A calibration of a buffer-stock savings model indicates that rising savings rates among younger households are consistent with rising income uncertainty and higher saving rates among older households are consistent with a decline in the pension replacement ratio for those retiring after 1997. We conclude that rising income uncertainty and pension reforms can account for over half of the increase in the urban household savings rate in China since the mid-1990s as well as the U-shaped age-saving profile.

Targets, Interest Rates, and Household Saving in Urban China

Targets, Interest Rates, and Household Saving in Urban China PDF Author: Mr.Malhar Nabar
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1463904258
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 30

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Book Description
This paper studies a panel of China's provinces over the period 1996-2009 during which urban household saving rates increased from 19 percent of disposable income to 30 percent. It finds that the increase in urban saving rates is negatively associated with the decline in real interest rates over this period. This negative association suggests that Chinese households save with a target level of saving in mind. When the return to saving declines (increases), it becomes more difficult (easier) to meet a target and households increase (lower) their saving out of current disposable income to compensate. The results are robust across specifications and to the inclusion of additional variables. A main policy implication is that an increase in real deposit rates may help lower household saving and boost domestic consumption.

Public Expenditures on Social Programs and Household Consumption in China

Public Expenditures on Social Programs and Household Consumption in China PDF Author: Mr.David Coady
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1451982135
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 29

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Book Description
This paper shows that increasing government social expenditures can make a substantive contribution to increasing household consumption in China. The paper first undertakes an empirical study of the relationship between the savings rate and social expenditures for a panel of OECD countries and provides illustrative estimates of their implications for China. It then applies a generational accounting framework to Chinese household income survey data. This analysis suggests that a sustained 1 percent of GDP increase in public expenditures, distributed equally across education, health, and pensions, would result in a permanent increase the household consumption ratio of 11⁄4 percentage points of GDP.

China’s High Savings: Drivers, Prospects, and Policies

China’s High Savings: Drivers, Prospects, and Policies PDF Author: Ms.Longmei Zhang
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1484388771
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 38

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Book Description
China’s high national savings rate—one of the highest in the world—is at the heart of its external/internal imbalances. High savings finance elevated investment when held domestically, or lead to large external imbalances when they flow abroad. Today, high savings mostly emanate from the household sector, resulting from demographic changes induced by the one-child policy and the transformation of the social safety net and job security that occured during the transition from planned to market economy. Housing reform and rising income inequality also contribute to higher savings. Moving forward, demographic changes will put downward pressure on savings. Policy efforts in strengthening the social safety net and reducing income inequality are also needed to reduce savings further and boost consumption.

Rising Inequality in China

Rising Inequality in China PDF Author: Shi Li
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107002915
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 531

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Book Description
This book examines the evolution of economic inequality in China from 2002 to 2007; a sequel to Inequality and Public Policy in China (2008).

Alternative Economic Indicators

Alternative Economic Indicators PDF Author: C. James Hueng
Publisher: W.E. Upjohn Institute
ISBN: 0880996765
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 133

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Book Description
Policymakers and business practitioners are eager to gain access to reliable information on the state of the economy for timely decision making. More so now than ever. Traditional economic indicators have been criticized for delayed reporting, out-of-date methodology, and neglecting some aspects of the economy. Recent advances in economic theory, econometrics, and information technology have fueled research in building broader, more accurate, and higher-frequency economic indicators. This volume contains contributions from a group of prominent economists who address alternative economic indicators, including indicators in the financial market, indicators for business cycles, and indicators of economic uncertainty.

China's Unfinished Economic Revolution

China's Unfinished Economic Revolution PDF Author: Nicholas R. Lardy
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 9780815791539
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
China's Unfinished Economic Revolution offers a fundamentally different interpretation of China's economic reform. The common view that China's gradualistic approach has served it well overlooks the fact that state-owned banks for the last two decades have channeled a large share of sharply rising household savings into what are mostly unreformed, money-losing companies. The result is that several of China's largest financial institutions now are insolvent. To avoid a major domestic banking crisis the book argues that China must recapitalize and restructure its domestic banking system and end the long-standing practice of making lending decisions based on political rather than economic criteria. Nicholas Lardy explains that this course will inevitably be costly in political terms, in part because it will lead for a time to a slower rate of economic growth. But the alternative is even less attractive—permanently slower growth, continued macroeconomic instability, an inability to meet the expectations of the international community for the opening of its domestic financial markets, and insufficient resources to deal with severe environmental deterioration, growing water shortages, and a rapidly aging population. This timely book also analyzes the new reform initiatives China has launched in the wake of the Asian financial crisis, suggests additional steps that must be taken, and evaluates the implications for U.S. policy.

Children and Pensions

Children and Pensions PDF Author: Alessandro Cigno
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262033690
Category : Child welfare
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
An analysis of the effect of public pension schemes on a country's fertility rate and a proposal for policies to reform pension coverage in light of this. The rapidly aging populations of many developed countries--most notably Japan and member countries of the European Union--present obvious problems for the public pension plans of these countries. Not only will there be disproportionately fewer workers making pension contributions than there are retirees drawing pension benefits, but the youth-to-age imbalance would significantly affect the total contributive capacity of future generations and hence their total income growth. In Children and Pensions, Alessandro Cigno and Martin Werding examine the way pension policy and child-related benefits affect fertility behavior and productivity growth. They present theoretical arguments to the effect that public pension coverage as such will reduce aggregate fertility and may raise aggregate household savings. They argue further that public pensions, as they are currently designed, discourage parents from private human capital investment in their children to improve the children's future earning capacity. After an overview of pension and child benefit policies (focusing on the European Union, Japan, and the United States), the authors offer an empirical and theoretical analysis and a simulation of the effects of the policies under discussion. Their policy proposals to address declines in fertility and productivity growth include the innovative suggestion that relates a person's pension entitlements to his or her number of children and the children's earning ability--proposing that, in effect, a person's pension could be financed in part or in full by the pensioner's own children.

Strategic Asset Allocation

Strategic Asset Allocation PDF Author: John Y. Campbell
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 019160691X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Academic finance has had a remarkable impact on many financial services. Yet long-term investors have received curiously little guidance from academic financial economists. Mean-variance analysis, developed almost fifty years ago, has provided a basic paradigm for portfolio choice. This approach usefully emphasizes the ability of diversification to reduce risk, but it ignores several critically important factors. Most notably, the analysis is static; it assumes that investors care only about risks to wealth one period ahead. However, many investors—-both individuals and institutions such as charitable foundations or universities—-seek to finance a stream of consumption over a long lifetime. In addition, mean-variance analysis treats financial wealth in isolation from income. Long-term investors typically receive a stream of income and use it, along with financial wealth, to support their consumption. At the theoretical level, it is well understood that the solution to a long-term portfolio choice problem can be very different from the solution to a short-term problem. Long-term investors care about intertemporal shocks to investment opportunities and labor income as well as shocks to wealth itself, and they may use financial assets to hedge their intertemporal risks. This should be important in practice because there is a great deal of empirical evidence that investment opportunities—-both interest rates and risk premia on bonds and stocks—-vary through time. Yet this insight has had little influence on investment practice because it is hard to solve for optimal portfolios in intertemporal models. This book seeks to develop the intertemporal approach into an empirical paradigm that can compete with the standard mean-variance analysis. The book shows that long-term inflation-indexed bonds are the riskless asset for long-term investors, it explains the conditions under which stocks are safer assets for long-term than for short-term investors, and it shows how labor income influences portfolio choice. These results shed new light on the rules of thumb used by financial planners. The book explains recent advances in both analytical and numerical methods, and shows how they can be used to understand the portfolio choice problems of long-term investors.