Un Estudio del Ahorro Agregado por Agentes Económicos en Chile

This paper estimates empirical relations between saving rates and their economic and demographic determinants in Chile. Using annual data for 1960-1997, the paper analyzes saving aggregates by economic agents or sectors: aggregate private-sector saving, corporate and household saving, and public-sector saving. A reduced-form specification of saving rates is used, based on recent consumption and saving theories. Sector offsets are also addressed, including testing for Ricardian Equivalence, household piercing of the corporate veil, and voluntary-mandatory household saving offset. The estimation technique is based on a recent methodology proposed by Pesaran (1997) and Pesaran and Shin (1997) that allows for estimating long-run relations between stationary and integrated variables. In addition to applying a novel estimation technique, this paper makes uses of recent sector saving data made available for Chile. In addition alternative saving measures are used that are consistent with sector changes in net worth. The latter adjust conventional saving measures for consumption expenditure on durable goods, education expenditure, and capital losses from inflation suffered by holders of monetary assets.