Japan's Household Savings Rate


Book Description

This paper develops and tests a model of Japan’s household savings rate, based on the life-cycle hypothesis that the primary motive for savings is provision for retirement. The paper shows that Japan’s high household savings rate in recent decades reflects the positive influence of rapid economic growth, leading to a prolonged retirement period through the wealth and life-expectancy effects of an income change, which has initially outweighed the negative combined influence of improvements in public pension benefits and the aging of the population. It projects that the savings rate will decline substantially in coming decades as the negative influence accelerates.




The Japanese Economy


Book Description




Understanding Saving


Book Description

Analysis of consumption and saving decisions by households has always been one of the most active areas of research in economics--and with good reason. Private consumption is the most important component of aggregate demand in a capitalist economy, and explaining consumption is the key element in most macroeconomic forecasting models. To evaluate the effect of government policies invariably requires the knowledge of how they change parameters relevant for household decision making. Understanding Saving collects eleven papers by economist Fumio Hayashi, along with two previously unpublished chapters, for a total of thirteen chapters. The monograph, which brings together Hayashi's empirical research on saving, is divided into three sections. Part I, "Liquidity Constraints", contains five studies that test the well-known implication of the Life Cycle-Permanent Income hypothesis that households shield consumption from income fluctuations. Part II, "Risk-Sharing and Altruism", contains three papers that examine the interactions between related and unrelated households predicted by the hypothesis for the US and Japanese households. The three papers in Part III, "Japanese Saving Behavior", present the author's explanation of the high saving rate in postwar Japan.




International Comparisons of Household Saving


Book Description

Governments and corporations may chip in, but around the world houshold saving is the biggest factor in national saving. To better understand why saving rates differ across countries, this volume provides the most up-to-date analyses of patterns of household saving behavior in Canada, Italy, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Each of the six chapters examines micro data sets of household saving within a particular country and summarizes statistics on patterns of saving by age, income, and other demographic factors. The authors provide age-earning profiles and analyses of the accumulation of wealth over the lifetime in a clear way that allows quick comparisons between earning, consumption, and saving in the six countries. Designed as a companion to Public Policies and Household Saving (1994), which addresses saving policies in the G-7 nations, this volume offers detailed descriptions of saving behavior in all G-7 nations except France.




Japan Report


Book Description




Japan's Economic Recovery


Book Description

The contributors to this book, from the US and Japan, explore the main issues involved in the international trade, foreign direct investment, and macro/financial relations of the United States and Japan and provide guidance to policy makers for measures to help overcome Japan's economic stagnation since the early 1990s. The book is divided into three parts. Part I contains an empirical analysis of trade diversion under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a theoretical analysis of time in determining the structure and effects of trade with an application to Japan, and an empirical analysis of Japan's changing import behavior. Part II is focused on foreign direct investment (FDI), trade, and the behavior and structure of Japanese firms. Part III deals with macro/financial issues of current interest and importance in Japan. The analytical focus of the chapters is intended to enhance the understanding of the issues addressed and to provide some guidance to policymakers in the design of measures that will improve economic efficiency and welfare and help to overcome the economic stagnation that Japan has experienced in the past decade or more.




The Demographic Challenge: A Handbook about Japan


Book Description

This Handbook explores the challenges demographic change poses to today’s Japan. The first part provides the fundamental data involved, and the subsequent two parts address the social and cultural aspects of Japan’s demographic change. Parts four and five are dedicated to the political, economic and social security aspects of demographic change. The Handbook brings together a group of international scholars of various disciplinary backgrounds to take issue with the world’s fastest demographic transition. Topics include the dynamics of gender roles, images of age, policy formation, labour market structures, pension system, living arrangements, ethical values, and many more. Against the background of Japan’s demographic change, the latest developments in these fields are being introduced, and whenever appropriate set into a context of historical and/or international comparison. This Handbook is the first comprehensive publication in English on Japan’s demographic change. Contributors include: Makoto Atoh, Hans Dieter Ölschleger, Ryuichi Kaneko, Ralph Lützeler, Shigemi Kono, Matthias Koch, Sepp Linhart, Takeo Ogawa, Chikako Usui, Leng Leng Thang, Susan (Orpett) Long, Sawako Shirahase, Toshiko Himeoka, James Raymo, Miho Iwasawa, Akiko S Oishi, Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu, David Blake Willis, Susanne Formanek, Mayumi Sekizawa, Christopher S Thompson, John W Traphagan, Kenji Ishii, Craig Martin, Peter Backhaus, Fumio Inoue, Lisette Gebhardt, Nobuko Shiraishi, Sumiko Iwao, Roger Goodman, Takanori Shintani, Fumihiko Satofuka, Carolin Funck, John Clammer, Wolfram Manzenreiter, Leonard Schoppa, John C Campbell, Paul Talcott, David Potter, Robert Pekkanen, Yutaka Tsujinaka, Akihiro Ogawa, Susanne Kreitz-Sandberg, Liv Coleman, Glenda S Roberts, Thomas Feldhoff, Patricia Maclachlan, Naohiro Ogawa, Akihiro Kawase, Seiritsu Ogura, Volker Elis, Charles Yuji Horioka, Fumio Ohtake, Hisashi Fukawa, Naohiro Yashiro, Hendrik Meyer-Ohle, Karen A Shire, Harald Conrad, Hidehiko Sekizawa, Andreas Moerke, Ito Peng, Naoki Ikegami, Makoto Arai, Tetsuo Fukawa, Takashi Oshio, Noriyuki Takayama, and Tomoyuki Kubo.




Public Policies and Household Saving


Book Description

The declining U.S. national saving rate has prompted economists and policymakers to ask, should the federal government encourage household saving, and if so, through which policies? In order to better understand saving programs, this volume provides a systematic and detailed description of saving policies in the G-7 industrialized nations: the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom. Each of the seven chapters focuses on one country and addresses a core set of topics: types of accumulated household savings and debt; tax policies toward capital income; saving in the form of public and private pensions, including Social Security and similar programs; saving programs that receive special tax treatment; and saving through insurance. This detailed summary of the saving incentives of the G-7 nations will be an invaluable reference for policymakers and academics interested in personal saving behavior.




The Ambivalent Consumer


Book Description

A comparative examination of the ambivalence provoked, especially in East and Southeast Asia, by the global spread of "American" consumer culture.




A Quest for a More Stable World Economic System


Book Description

In the autumn of 1990 there was a sense of change taking place in the world economy. Readiness for war was occurrin~ in the Middle East and a recession was already underway in a few major countries. The forces of reform and political re-shaping were visible in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. We economists, gathering in Osaka, Japan, under the auspices of the International Institute for Advanced Studies (Kyoto) could recognize that the Cold War was over and that politico-economic restructuring would take place among the powers in the Warsaw Treaty Organization. Much has happened since the latter part of 1990 to affect international economic stability. The events of that period were both positive and negative for economic stability, but our concern was weighted towards the negative side. Dur charge and sponsorship was scholarly, and the papers from the learned contributors to the symposium and this resulting volume used the many tools of economic analysis to try to understand the ongoing developments. In the intervening period, while this volume was being prepared and edited, we did not cnange our viewpoints in any fundamental way, and we can take satisfaction in the way our symposium either relates to the unfolding sequence of events in a substantive sense or provides a framework in which to study these events.