IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ebl/ecbull/eb-08e20007.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Did lower interest rates reduce Japan's household savings rate since the 1990s? Evidence based on the maturation of postal savings certificates

Author

Listed:
  • Satoshi Shimizutani

    (Senior Research Fellow, Institute for International Policy Studies)

  • Noriko Inakura

    (Ph.D. candidate, Graduate School of Systems and Information Engineering, University of Tsukuba)

Abstract

Japan's traditionally high household saving rate has declined substantially since the early 1990s. While this decline is often explained as a result of the rapid increase in the population share of the elderly who are dissaving, we argue that the cause is a decline in interest income triggered by falling interest rates. To examine our hypothesis, we focus on the effect of the maturation of relatively high-yielding postal savings certificates. Estimating a savings function, we find that the reduction in interest income caused by the maturation of the postal saving certificates reduced household saving rates by more than 3 percentage points.

Suggested Citation

  • Satoshi Shimizutani & Noriko Inakura, 2008. "Did lower interest rates reduce Japan's household savings rate since the 1990s? Evidence based on the maturation of postal savings certificates," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 5(22), pages 1-8.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-08e20007
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.accessecon.com/pubs/EB/2008/Volume5/EB-08E20007A.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Karen E. Dynan & Jonathan Skinner & Stephen P. Zeldes, 2004. "Do the Rich Save More?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(2), pages 397-444, April.
    2. Charles Yuji Horioka, 2000. "A Cointegration Analysis of the Impact of the Age Structure of the Population on the Household Saving Rate in Japan," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 79(3), pages 511-516, August.
    3. Maiko Koga, 2006. "The Decline Of Japan'S Saving Rate And Demographic Effects," The Japanese Economic Review, Japanese Economic Association, vol. 57(2), pages 312-321, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Salami , Habibollah & Javanbakht , Ozra, 2011. "Macro-Economic Impacts of Lowering Interest Rate: A Real-Financial CGE Evaluation for Iran," Journal of Money and Economy, Monetary and Banking Research Institute, Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran, vol. 6(1), pages 107-133, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ichiro Muto & Takemasa Oda & Nao Sudo, 2016. "Macroeconomic Impact of Population Aging in Japan: A Perspective from an Overlapping Generations Model," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 64(3), pages 408-442, August.
    2. Bunting, David, 2009. "The saving decline: Macro-facts, micro-behavior," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 70(1-2), pages 282-295, May.
    3. Grossmann, Volker, 2008. "Risky human capital investment, income distribution, and macroeconomic dynamics," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 19-42, March.
    4. Bertrand Garbinti & Jonathan Goupille-Lebret & Thomas Piketty, 2016. "Accounting for Wealth Inequality Dynamics: Methods, Estimates and Simulations for France (1800-2014)," World Inequality Lab Working Papers halshs-02794339, HAL.
    5. Stefano Colonnello & Mariela Dal Borgo, 2024. "Raising Household Leverage: Evidence from Co-Financed Mortgages," Working Papers 2024: 01, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    6. Charles Yuji Horioka, 2016. "Is Imbalances And Current Account Surpluses In Japan: In Memory Of Professor Ronald I. Mckinnon," The Singapore Economic Review (SER), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 61(02), pages 1-17, June.
    7. David Laibson, 1997. "Golden Eggs and Hyperbolic Discounting," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(2), pages 443-478.
    8. Mr. Christopher Carroll & Mr. Martin Sommer & Mr. Jiri Slacalek, 2012. "Dissecting Saving Dynamics: Measuring Wealth, Precautionary, and Credit Effects," IMF Working Papers 2012/219, International Monetary Fund.
    9. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/4aorppjfgr8v2prdh6fmd1kaik is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Pottier, Antonin, 2022. "Expenditure elasticity and income elasticity of GHG emissions: A survey of literature on household carbon footprint," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 192(C).
    11. William M. Gentry & R. Glenn Hubbard, 2000. "Entrepreneurship and Household Saving," NBER Working Papers 7894, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Michael J. Kottelenberg & Steven F. Lehrer, 2019. "How Skills and Parental Valuation of Education Influence Human Capital Acquisition and Early Labor Market Return to Human Capital in Canada," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 37(S2), pages 735-778.
    13. María José Roa García & Diana Mejía (ed.), 2018. "Decisiones financieras de los hogares e inclusión financiera: evidencia para América Latina y el Caribe," Investigación Conjunta-Joint Research, Centro de Estudios Monetarios Latinoamericanos, CEMLA, edition 1, volume 1, number 7sp, December.
    14. Sebastian Doerr & Thomas Drechsel & Donggyu Lee, 2021. "Income inequality, financial intermediation, and small firms," BIS Working Papers 944, Bank for International Settlements.
    15. repec:dpr:wpaper:0888 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Christian A Belabed & Thomas Theobald & Till van Treeck, 2018. "Income distribution and current account imbalances [Notes on capacity utilisation, distribution and accumulation]," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 42(1), pages 47-94.
    17. Binswanger, J., 2008. "A Simple Bounded-Rationality Life Cycle Model," Discussion Paper 2008-13, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    18. Lars Osberg, 2014. "What’s So Bad About More Inequality?," Working Papers daleconwp2014-01, Dalhousie University, Department of Economics.
    19. Charles Yuji Horioka & Akiko Terada-Hagiwara, 2016. "The Impact of Pre-marital Sex Ratios on Household Saving in Two Asian Countries: The Competitive Saving Motive Revisited," ISER Discussion Paper 0975, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University.
    20. Tonni, Lorenzo, 2021. "Personal income distribution and the endogeneity of the demand regime," MPRA Paper 108298, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    21. Clain-Chamosset-Yvrard Lise & Seegmuller Thomas, 2019. "Bubble on real estate: the role of altruism and fiscal policy," Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics & Econometrics, De Gruyter, vol. 23(4), pages 1-18, September.
    22. Jlenia Di Noia, 2024. "When firms buy corporate bonds: an agent-based approach to credit within firms," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 19(4), pages 689-725, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    household savings rate;

    JEL classification:

    • E2 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment
    • D1 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-08e20007. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: John P. Conley (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.