Saving and the Accumulation of Wealth
Essays on Italian Household and Government Saving Behavior

Taking Italy as their field of research, the contributors conduct a coherent analysis of households' saving behaviour.

Albert Ando (Edited by), Luigi Guiso (Edited by), Ignazio Visco (Edited by)

9780521452083, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 25 March 1994

428 pages
23.6 x 16.1 x 2.9 cm, 0.765 kg

The evolution of private saving and its interaction with government fiscal policy play an important and complex role in the development of the national economy. To gain insight into this process, it is imperative that we improve our understanding of the savings behaviour of individual households and of the ways in which they aggregate over the entire population to produce national saving. Italy provides an ideal laboratory in which to assess the impact of government and private transfer, imperfections in the capital markets, productivity growth and shifting demographic patterns on the saving behavior of individual households and on their aggregation into total private saving. The book draws on the Italian experience and data, and offers findings on many aspects of the process of saving determination.

Foreword Antonio Fazio
List of contributors
List of figures
List of tables
Acknowledgements
Introduction Albert Ando, Luigi Guiso and Ignazio Visco
Part I. Saving Trends, Government Deficit and Demographic Changes: 1. Why is Italy's saving rate so high? Luigi Guiso, Tullio Jappelli and Daniele Terlizzese
2. Private saving and the government deficit in Italy Nicola Rossi and Ignazio Visco
3. Do demographic changes explain the decline in the saving rate of Italian households? Luigi Cannari
4. Generational accounting. The case of Italy Daniele Franco, Jagadeesh Gokhale, Luigi Guiso, Laurence J. Kotlikoff and Nicola Sartor
Part II. Life-Cycle Saving and Precautionary Motives: 5. Young households' saving and the life cycle of opportunities. Evidence from Japan and Italy Albert Ando, Luigi Guiso and Daniele Terlizzese
6. Dissaving by the elderly, transfer motives and liquidity constraints Albert Ando, Luigi Guiso and Daniele Terlizzese
7. Earnings uncertainty and precautionary saving Luigi Guiso, Tullio Jappelli and Daniele Terlizzese
8. Risk sharing and precautionary saving Luigo Guiso and Tullio Japelli
Part III. Borrowing Constraints, Intergenerational Transfers and Bequests: 9. Saving and borrowing constraints Livio Maccan, Nicola Rossi and Ignazio Visco
10. Durables and non-durables consumption: evidence from Italian household data Agar Brugiavini and Guglielmo Weber
11. Intergenerational transfers and capital market imperfections. Evidence from a cross-section of Italian households Luigi Guiso and Tullio Jappelli
12. Bequests and saving for retirement. What impels the accumulation of wealth? Fabrizio Barca, Luigi Cannari and Luigi Guiso
Methodological appendix: the bank of Italy's survey of household income and wealth Andrea Brandolini and Luigi Cannari
Statistical appendix
Index.

Subject Areas: Macroeconomics [KCB]