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The Importance of Precautionary Motives in Explaining Individual and Aggregate Saving

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  • R. Glenn Hubbard
  • Jonathan Skinner
  • Stephen P. Zeldes

Abstract

This paper examines predictions of a life-cycle simulation model -- in which individuals face uncertainty regarding their length of life, earnings, and out-of-pocket medical expenditures, and imperfect insurance and lending markets -- for individual and aggregate wealth accumulation. Relative to life-cycle or buffer-stock alternatives, our augmented life-cycle model better matches a variety of features of U.S. data, including: (1) aggregate wealth, (2) cross-sectional differences in wealth-age and consumption-age profiles by education group, and (3) short-run time-series co-movements of consumption and income.

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  • R. Glenn Hubbard & Jonathan Skinner & Stephen P. Zeldes, 1993. "The Importance of Precautionary Motives in Explaining Individual and Aggregate Saving," NBER Working Papers 4516, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:4516
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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • H31 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Household

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