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Savings and Saving Rates: Up or Down?

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  • Guillermo Ordoñez
  • Facundo Piguillem

Abstract

It depends what we want to measure. Most literature has focused on observed flow of savings (per-period savings as fraction of GDP), which has declined persistently since 1980. Even though this decline means that fewer funds are available for investment in each period, it does not follow that the households’ actual savings (underlying, not observed, savings determined by dynamic optimization) also go down. We theoretically link these two concepts, discuss the conditions under which they move in opposite directions, and show that indeed the actual savings has sharply increased since 1980.

Suggested Citation

  • Guillermo Ordoñez & Facundo Piguillem, 2020. "Savings and Saving Rates: Up or Down?," NBER Working Papers 27179, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:27179
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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E01 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General - - - Measurement and Data on National Income and Product Accounts and Wealth; Environmental Accounts
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • G51 - Financial Economics - - Household Finance - - - Household Savings, Borrowing, Debt, and Wealth

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