Publication: The Spirit of Capitalism, Precautionary Savings, and Consumption
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Published
2009
ISSN
00222879
Date
2012-03-30
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Recent research has shown that the "spirit of capitalism"--a preference for wealth itself, in addition to consumption--has important implications for growth and asset pricing. This paper explores how the spirit of capitalism affects saving and consumption behavior. We demonstrate that the spirit of capitalism may reduce the importance of precautionary savings. It can also explain the excess sensitivity puzzle: the spirit of capitalism causes dramatic deviations from a random walk. It may also offer a partial explanation of the excess smoothness puzzle.
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Since developed economies have a comparative advantage in creating liquidity, they export liquid claims to emerging economies, resulting in a permanent current account deficit. This model suggests that unrestricted liquidity flows are (a) welfare reducing for emerging economies and (b) Pareto inefficient. The inefficiency results both from excessive investment for the purpose of creating collateral-backed liquid claims, and from excessive global fragility with respect to collateral shocks.Publication How Does the Sensitivity of Consumption to Income Vary Over Time?(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-04)This paper studies how the sensitivity of consumption to income has changed over time as the degree of financial integration has risen. In standard theory, greater financial integration facilitates international borrowing and lending, helping to reduce the sensitivity of consumption growth to fluctuations in income. The paper examines the empirical validity of this prediction using an array of indicators of financial integration for a large sample of advanced and developing countries over the period 1960-2011. Two main results are reported. First, the sensitivity of consumption to income has declined over time as the degree of financial integration has risen. The decline has been more pronounced in advanced economies than in developing ones. Second, the regression analysis indicates that a higher degree of financial integration is associated with a lower sensitivity of consumption to income. This finding is robust to the use of a wide range of empirical specifications, country-specific characteristics, and other controls, such as interest rates and outcome-based measures of financial integration. 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