Private Saving Rates and Macroeconomic Uncertainty: Evidence from Spanish Regional Data
Abstract
The onset of the Great Recession has been followed by increasing saving rates, which may reflect precautionary behaviour of households. In spite of a broad agreement on the theoretical implications of uncertainty on saving rates, empirical work has not yet reached a consensus on which is the most reliable measure of uncertainty. In this paper we empirically test the precautionary saving theory and explore different measures of macroeconomic uncertainty, using Spanish regional data for the period 1980-2007. Our results suggest that part of the large increase in saving rates that took place in the aftermath of the recession is related to a precautionary motive and that increased uncertainty causes greater savings rates. Moreover, our results also suggest that, in the case of the Spanish economy, the unemployment rate is a relevant variable to measure future income uncertainty.Download Info
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Paper provided by University Library of Munich, Germany in its series MPRA Paper with number 42647.Length:
Date of creation: Sep 2012
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:42647
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Keywords: Precautionary savings; uncertainty; regions; Spain;Other versions of this item:
- Roberto Bande & Dolores Riveiro, 2012. "Private Saving Rates and Macroeconomic Uncertainty: Evidence from Spanish Regional Data," Documentos de trabajo - IRENe 0004, IDEGA - Instituto Universitario de Estudios e Desenvolvemento de Galicia.
- R20 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - General
- E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomics: Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2012-12-06 (All new papers)
- NEP-GEO-2012-12-06 (Economic Geography)
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Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Bande, Roberto & Riveiro, Dolores, 2012.
"The Consumption-Investment-Unemployment Relationship in Spain: an Analysis with Regional Data,"
MPRA Paper
42681, University Library of Munich, Germany.
- Roberto Bande & Dolores Riveiro, 2012. "The Consumption-Investment-Unemployment Relationship in Spain: An Analysis with Regional Data," Documentos de trabajo - IRENe 0003, IDEGA - Instituto Universitario de Estudios e Desenvolvemento de Galicia.
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