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

by Albert Ando, Luigi Guiso, Ignazio Visco

Overview

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, we must first understand the savings behavior of individual households and 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 new findings on many aspects of the process of saving determination.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521452083
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	03/25/1994
Pages:	428
Product dimensions:	6.34(w) x 9.29(h) x 1.14(d)

Table of Contents

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.