【Empirical Seminar】Why Do Europeans Save? Micro-Evidence from the Household Finance and Consumption Survey
2024/08/16
研討會日期 : 2024-08-16
時間 : 10:30
主講人 : Professor Charles Yuji Horioka
地點 : Conference room B110
主持人 : Professor Kamhon Kan
演講者簡介 : Professor Charles Yuji Horioka received his PhD from Harvard University in 1985. He is currently a Project Professor at Kobe University. His research field is Macroeconomic Policy Analysis.
演講摘要 : In this paper, we analyze the saving motives of European households using micro-data from the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (hereafter referred to as HFCS), which is conducted by the European Central Bank. To summarize our main findings, we find that the rank ordering of saving motives differs greatly depending on what criterion is used to rank them. For example, we find that the precautionary motive is the most important saving motive of European households when the proportion of households saving for each motive is used as the criterion to rank them but that the retirement motive is the most important saving motive of European households if the quantitative importance of each motive is taken into account. Our finding that saving motives that are consistent with the selfish life-cycle model as well as saving motives that are consistent with the altruism model are important in Europe implies that the two models coexist in Europe(i.e., that both types of households coexist and/or that both models coexist within the same household in Europe), as is the case in other parts of the world (see section 2). However, our finding that the retirement motive, which is the saving motive that exemplifies the selfish life-cycle model, is of dominant importance in Europe strongly suggests that this model is far more applicable in Europe than is the altruistic model. Moreover, our finding that saving for intergenerational transfers accounts for less than one-fifth of total household wealth in Europe provides further corroboration for this finding. Finally, our results suggest that generous pension benefits and other social safety nets reduce saving for retirement and precautionary saving.
