IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/jecfin/v30y2006i2p155-168.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Prudence and precautionary saving

Author

Listed:
  • Luigi Ventura
  • Joseph Eisenhauer

Abstract

Households save income for various reasons, including the need to plan for the future, the intention to leave a bequest, and the desire to guard against unforeseen expenditures and income fluctuations. Although it is widely believed that prudent individuals engage in precautionary saving, the extent of such saving is not well understood. This paper develops a model of saving with an explicit role for the Leland-Kimball measure of prudence. Estimation of the model using household-level data from Italy suggests an average value of relative prudence near 4 or 5, with approximately 15 to 36 percent of total saving being precautionary. Copyright Springer 2006

Suggested Citation

  • Luigi Ventura & Joseph Eisenhauer, 2006. "Prudence and precautionary saving," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 30(2), pages 155-168, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:jecfin:v:30:y:2006:i:2:p:155-168
    DOI: 10.1007/BF02761482
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/BF02761482
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/BF02761482?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bernheim, B Douglas, 1991. "How Strong Are Bequest Motives? Evidence Based on Estimates of the Demand for Life Insurance and Annuities," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(5), pages 899-927, October.
    2. Merrigan, Philip & Normandin, Michel, 1996. "Precautionary Saving Motives: An Assessment from UK Time Series of Cross-Sections," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 106(438), pages 1193-1208, September.
    3. Johansson-Stenman , Olof & Svedsäter, Henrik, 2003. "Self Image And Choice Experiments: Hypothetical And Actual Willingness To Pay," Working Papers in Economics 94, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    4. Lusardi, Annamaria, 1997. "Precautionary saving and subjective earnings variance," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 57(3), pages 319-326, December.
    5. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:3:y:2004:i:6:p:1-13 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. John Y. Campbell & João F. Cocco & Francisco J. Gomes & Pascal J. Maenhout, 2001. "Investing Retirement Wealth: A Life-Cycle Model," NBER Chapters, in: Risk Aspects of Investment-Based Social Security Reform, pages 439-482, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Irvine, Ian & Wang, Susheng, 2001. "Saving behavior and wealth accumulation in a pure lifecycle model with income uncertainty," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 45(2), pages 233-258, February.
    8. Stefan Hochguertel, 2003. "Precautionary motives and portfolio decisions," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(1), pages 61-77.
    9. Skinner, Jonathan, 1988. "Risky income, life cycle consumption, and precautionary savings," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 237-255, September.
    10. Kuehlwein, Michael, 1991. "A test for the presence of precautionary saving," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 37(4), pages 471-475, December.
    11. Miles S. Kimball, 1990. "Precautionary Saving and the Marginal Propensity to Consume," NBER Working Papers 3403, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Joseph Little & Robert Berrens, 2004. "Explaining Disparities between Actual and Hypothetical Stated Values: Further Investigation Using Meta-Analysis," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 3(6), pages 1-13.
    13. Kuehlwein, Michael, 1993. "Life-Cycle and Altruistic Theories of Saving with Lifetime Uncertainty," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 75(1), pages 38-47, February.
    14. Adam J. Grossberg, 1991. "Personal Saving under Income Uncertainty: A Test of the Intertemporal Substitution Hypothesis," Eastern Economic Journal, Eastern Economic Association, vol. 17(2), pages 203-210, Apr-Jun.
    15. Jonathan A. Parker, 1999. "The Reaction of Household Consumption to Predictable Changes in Social Security Taxes," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(4), pages 959-973, September.
    16. Luis M. Viceira, 2001. "Optimal Portfolio Choice for Long‐Horizon Investors with Nontradable Labor Income," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(2), pages 433-470, April.
    17. Hayne E. Leland, 1968. "Saving and Uncertainty: The Precautionary Demand for Saving," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 82(3), pages 465-473.
    18. Deaton, Angus, 1992. "Understanding Consumption," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198288244.
    19. Karen E. Dynan, 1993. "How prudent are consumers?," Working Paper Series / Economic Activity Section 135, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    20. Dynan, Karen E, 1993. "How Prudent Are Consumers?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(6), pages 1104-1113, December.
    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. Ventura Luigi & Eisenhauer Joseph G., 2005. "The Relevance of Precautionary Saving," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 6(1), pages 23-35, February.
    2. Alba Lugilde, 2024. "The impact of measured income uncertainty on Spanish household consumption at the end of the Great Recession," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 51(3), pages 679-702, August.
    3. Laudo Ogura & David T Yi, 2015. "Determinants of saving in U.S. nonprofit organizations," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 35(4), pages 2786-2795.
    4. Barbara Broadway & John P. Haisken-DeNew, 2019. "Keep calm and consume? Subjective uncertainty and precautionary savings," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 43(3), pages 481-505, July.
    5. Lugilde, Alba, 2018. "Does income uncertainty affect Spanish household consumption?," MPRA Paper 87110, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Paul Heidhues & Botond Kőszegi, 2017. "Naïveté-Based Discrimination," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 132(2), pages 1019-1054.
    7. Dominique Henriet & Patrick A. Pintus & Alain Trannoy, 2014. "Is the Flat Tax Optimal under Income Risk?," Working Papers halshs-00999222, HAL.
    8. Ton S van den Bremer & Frederick van der Ploeg, 2013. "Managing and Harnessing Volatile Oil Windfalls," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 61(1), pages 130-167, April.
    9. AJ A. Bostian & Christoph Heinzel, 2016. "Consumption Smoothing and Precautionary Saving under Recursive Preferences," FOODSECURE Working papers 44, LEI Wageningen UR.
    10. Hideaki Tamura & Yoichi Matsubayashi, 2014. "A New Solution to the Equity Premium Puzzle and the Risk-Free Rate Puzzle: Theory and Evidence," Discussion Papers 1422, Graduate School of Economics, Kobe University.

    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. Joseph Eisenhauer & Luigi Ventura, 2003. "Survey measures of risk aversion and prudence," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(13), pages 1477-1484.
    2. Luigi Ventura & Joseph G. Eisenhauer, 2005. "The Relevance of Precautionary Saving," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 6(1), pages 23-35, February.
    3. Pasquale Lucio Scandizzo, 2014. "The social rate of discount, climate change and real options," CEIS Research Paper 309, Tor Vergata University, CEIS, revised 18 Feb 2014.
    4. Heinzel Christoph & Richard Peter, 2021. "Precautionary motives with multiple instruments," Working Papers SMART 21-09, INRAE UMR SMART.
    5. Daria Pignalosa, 2019. "On the role of the utility function in the estimation of preference parameters," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 70(4), pages 793-820, November.
    6. Atreya Chakraborty & Mark Kazarosian, 1999. "Portfolio Allocation of Precautionary Assets: Panel Evidence for the United States," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 432, Boston College Department of Economics.
    7. Christoph Heinzel & Richard Peter, 2021. "Precautionary motives with multiple instruments [Motifs de précaution en cas de multiples instruments]," Working Papers hal-03484875, HAL.
    8. Heinzel, Christoph & Peter, Richard, 2021. "Precautionary motives with multiple instruments," Working Papers 316521, Institut National de la recherche Agronomique (INRA), Departement Sciences Sociales, Agriculture et Alimentation, Espace et Environnement (SAE2).
    9. Sydney Ludvigson & Christina H. Paxson, 2001. "Approximation Bias In Linearized Euler Equations," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 83(2), pages 242-256, May.
    10. Sule Alan, 2004. "Precautionary Wealth and Portfolio Allocation: Evidence from Canadian Microdata," Social and Economic Dimensions of an Aging Population Research Papers 117, McMaster University.
    11. Andrew Benito, 2002. "Does Job Insecurity Affect Household Consumption?," Working Papers 0225, Banco de España.
    12. Abdul Jalil, Ahmad Zafarullah, 2009. "The importance of precautionary saving motive among Indonesian households," MPRA Paper 25189, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Essig, Lothar, 2005. "Precautionary saving and old-age provisions : do subjective saving motives measures work?," Papers 05-22, Sonderforschungsbreich 504.
    14. Alessandro Federici & Pierluigi Montalbano, 2012. "Macroeconomic volatility, consumption behaviour and welfare: A cross-country analysis," Working Paper Series 3612, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    15. Alba Lugilde & Roberto Bande & Dolores Riveiro, 2018. "Precautionary saving in Spain during the great recession: evidence from a panel of uncertainty indicators," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 16(4), pages 1151-1179, December.
    16. Aaberge, Rolf & Liu, Kai & Zhu, Yu, 2017. "Political uncertainty and household savings," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(1), pages 154-170.
    17. Gomes, Fábio Augusto Reis & Ribeiro, Priscila Fernandes, 2015. "Estimating the elasticity of intertemporal substitution taking into account the precautionary savings motive," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 108-123.
    18. Alessandra Guariglia & Byung‐Yeon Kim, 2003. "The Effects of Consumption Variability on Saving: Evidence from a Panel of Muscovite Households," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 65(3), pages 357-377, July.
    19. Reis Gomes, Fábio Augusto, 2020. "Evaluating a consumption function with precautionary savings and habit formation under a general income process," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 157-166.
    20. Bessho, Shun-ichiro & Tobita, Eiko, 2008. "Unemployment risk and buffer-stock saving: An empirical investigation in Japan," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 303-325, August.

    More about this item

    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:spr:jecfin:v:30:y:2006:i:2:p:155-168. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.