IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/3341.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

What is National Saving?: Alternative Measures in Historical and International Context

Author

Listed:
  • David F. Bradford

Abstract

Most discussion of national saving behavior is based on national income account data. This paper lays out some of the main alternative conceptions of saving and to present data comparing recent U.S. saving behavior with its own past and with that of other nations. I argue, in particular, that more attention should be paid to measures of national wealth at asset market values. The main empirical contribution is to pull together data from the national balance sheets on wealth at market value compiled for the United States by the Flow of Funds Division of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (1989) and by various agencies sources in three other countries for which market value figures could be found: Japan, and Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

Suggested Citation

  • David F. Bradford, 1990. "What is National Saving?: Alternative Measures in Historical and International Context," NBER Working Papers 3341, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:3341
    Note: PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w3341.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bradford, D.F., 1989. "Market Value Us. Financial Accounting Measures Of National Saving," Papers 34, Princeton, Woodrow Wilson School - Discussion Paper.
    2. N/A, 1989. "Annual Report," Evaluation Review, , vol. 13(3), pages 320-320, June.
    3. Robert E. Lipsey & Irving B. Kravis, 1987. "Is the U.S. a Spendthrift Nation?," NBER Working Papers 2274, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Robert E. Lipsey & Helen Stone Tice, 1989. "The Measurement of Saving, Investment, and Wealth," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number lips89-1.
    5. Thomas Holloway, 1989. "Present NIPA Saving Measures: Their Characteristics and Limitations," NBER Chapters, in: The Measurement of Saving, Investment, and Wealth, pages 21-100, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Fumio Hayashi, 1989. "Is Japan's saving rate high?," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 13(Spr), pages 3-9.
    7. Dale Jorgenson & Barbara M. Fraumeni, 1989. "The Accumulation of Human and Nonhuman Capital, 1948-84," NBER Chapters, in: The Measurement of Saving, Investment, and Wealth, pages 227-286, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    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. A Lusardi & J Skinner & S Venti, 2001. "Saving puzzles and saving policies in the United States," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 17(1), pages 95-115, Spring.
    2. Michael Reiter, 1999. "Asset prices and the measurement of wealth and saving," Economics Working Papers 396, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    3. Roy H. Webb, 1993. "Personal saving behavior and real economic activity," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, issue Spr, pages 68-94.
    4. Kaiji Chen & Ayse Imrohoroglu & Selahattin Imrohoroglu, 2006. "Secular Trends in U.S Saving and Consumption," Computing in Economics and Finance 2006 494, Society for Computational Economics.
    5. Barry P. Bosworth & Ralph C. Bryant & Gary Burtless, 2004. "The Impact of Aging on Financial Markets and the Economy: A Survey," Working Papers, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College 2004-23, Center for Retirement Research.
    6. Fred Block, 1995. "Did Household Saving Really Decline in the Reagan Years?," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 27(4), pages 37-55, December.
    7. Barry Bosworth & Gary Burtless, 1992. "Effects of Tax Reform on Labor Supply, Investment, and Saving," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 6(1), pages 3-25, Winter.
    8. William G. Gale & John Sabelhaus, 1999. "Perspectives on the Household Saving Rate," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 30(1), pages 181-224.

    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. Roy H. Webb, 1993. "Personal saving behavior and real economic activity," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, issue Spr, pages 68-94.
    2. C. Lee, 1998. "Life Cycle Savings in the United States, 1900-1990," CPE working papers 0014, University of Chicago - Centre for Population Economics.
    3. Carol Corrado & Mary O'Mahony & Lea Samek, 2020. "Measuring education services using lifetime incomes," Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE) Discussion Papers ESCoE DP-2020-02, Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE).
    4. Bosworth, Barry & Collins, Susan M., 2010. "Rebalancing the US Economy in a Postcrisis World," ADBI Working Papers 236, Asian Development Bank Institute.
    5. Fraumeni, Barbara M. & Christian, Michael S. & Samuels, Jon D., 2020. "The Accumulation of Human and Market Capital in the United States: The Long View, 1948–2013," IZA Discussion Papers 13239, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Carol A. Corrado & Charles R. Hulten, 2014. "Innovation Accounting," NBER Chapters, in: Measuring Economic Sustainability and Progress, pages 595-628, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Jim Malley & Ulrich Woitek, 2009. "Productivity shocks and aggregate cycles in an estimated endogenous growth model," IEW - Working Papers 416, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    8. Max Gillman, 2019. "A Human Capital Theory of Structural Transformation," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp648, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    9. Kaushal, Kaushalendra Kumar, 2014. "Pathway from nutrition intake to wage among elementary workers in India," MPRA Paper 56652, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Konstantinos Angelopoulos & Jim Malley & Apostolis Philippopoulos, 2008. "Welfare Implications of Public Education Spending Rules," CESifo Working Paper Series 2510, CESifo.
    11. Bradford, D.F., 1989. "Market Value Us. Financial Accounting Measures Of National Saving," Papers 34, Princeton, Woodrow Wilson School - Discussion Paper.
    12. Barbara M. Fraumeni & Michael S. Christian & Jon D. Samuels, 2020. "The Accumulation of Human and Market Capital in the United States: The Long View, 1948–2013," NBER Working Papers 27170, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Michael J. Boskin, 1991. "Issues in the Measurement and Interpretation of Saving and Wealth," NBER Chapters, in: Fifty Years of Economic Measurement: The Jubilee of the Conference on Research in Income and Wealth, pages 159-184, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Bos, Frits, 2011. "A national accounts satellite for human capital and education," MPRA Paper 33791, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Tao, Hung-Lin & Stinson, Thomas F., 1997. "An Alternative Measure of Human Capital Stock," Bulletins 7466, University of Minnesota, Economic Development Center.
    16. T. Vinayagathasan & S. Vijesandiran, 2015. "Dynamic Relationship between Human Capital and Economic Growth in Sri Lanka: A Co-Integration Analysis," Growth, Asian Online Journal Publishing Group, vol. 2(2), pages 20-29.
    17. Zhu, Xuehong & Zeng, Anqi & Zhong, Meirui & Huang, Jianbai, 2021. "Elasticity of substitution and biased technical change in the CES production function for China's metal-intensive industries," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    18. Hulten, Charles R., 2010. "Growth Accounting," Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, in: Bronwyn H. Hall & Nathan Rosenberg (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 987-1031, Elsevier.
    19. R. Anton Braun & Etsuro Shioji, 2003. "Aggregate Risk in Japanese Equity Markets," CIRJE F-Series CIRJE-F-250, CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo.
    20. Charles R. Hulten, 2006. "The "Architecture" of Capital Accounting: Basic Design Principles," NBER Chapters, in: A New Architecture for the US National Accounts, pages 193-214, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    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:nbr:nberwo:3341. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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.