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Keywords
- Buffer Stock Saving (2) (remove)
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A tractable model of precautionary reserves, net foreign assets, or sovereign wealth funds
(2009)
- We model the motives for residents of a country to hold foreign assets, including the precautionary motive that has been omitted from much previous literature as intractable. Our model captures many of the principal insights from the existing specialized literature on the precautionary motive, deriving a convenient formula for the economy’s target value of assets. The target is the level of assets that balances impatience, prudence, risk, intertemporal substitution, and the rate of return. We use the model to shed light on two topical questions: The “upstream” flows of capital from developing countries to advanced countries, and the long-run impact of resorbing global financial imbalances. JEL-Classifications: C61 Keywords: Buffer Stock Saving, Net Foreign Assets, Sovereign Wealth Funds, Foreign Exchange Reserves, Small Open Economy Models
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Precautionary saving and the marginal propensity to consume out of permanent income
(2009)
- The budget constraint requires that, eventually, consumption must adjust fully to any permanent shock to income. Intuition suggests that, knowing this, optimizing agents will fully adjust their spending immediately upon experiencing a permanent shock. However, this paper shows that if consumers are impatient and are subject to transitory as well as permanent shocks, the optimal marginal propensity to consume out of permanent shocks (the MPCP) is strictly less than 1, because buffer stock savers have a target wealth-to-permanent-income ratio; a positive shock to permanent income moves the ratio below its target, temporarily boosting saving. JEL-Classifications: D81, D91, E21 Keywords: Risk, Uncertainty, Consumption, Precautionary Saving, Buffer Stock Saving, Permanent Income Hypothesis.
