This thesis investigates the determinants of private savings in Sweden, covering the time period 1914-2014. The steadily increasing fraction of the elderly, as a percentage of the working age population is a demographic development confronted by almost all industrialized countries nowadays. These conditions will bring further economic pressure on the finance of the social security systems in the years to come, hence affecting private savings. The association between private savings, globalization of capital markets and the release of liquidity constraints in many countries might also be an important determinant. These new conditions have in some cases improved consumer welfare by enabling more intertemporal substitution, the process of maximizing consumer’s utility by allocating resources across time. In this study the savings function is estimated based on several aspects concerning demographic and economic factors, based on the theories; life-cycle hypothesis of saving, precautionary saving theory, permanent income hypothesis and the Ricardian Equivalence theory. This study suggests that the private saving function is sensitive to the inflation rate and the policy implication of the relationship is presented.

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This paper focuses on the consumer expenditure habits in the years following the 2008 recession as compared to Milton Freidman’s Permanent Income Hypothesis. Panel data collected at the household level from the Consumer Expenditure Survey was used to analyze the change in consumption based on the change in income for the years 2009, 2010 and 2011. To achieve a greater understanding of expenditure patterns, this essay also analyzes the income elasticity of demand for elastic goods including expenditure on apparel, food eaten at restaurants, entertainment and transportation. With the use of panel and time series regressions we find that the Permanent Income Hypothesis holds true and consumers only marginally responded to a change in income in their consumption patterns. We hypothesize that the large spike in savings that was seen in May of 2008 resulted because of low consumer confidence, which in turn lead to a change in transitory consumption. Furthermore, we find that older adults spent more money on elastic goods than younger adults. This may be because older adults tend to have other assets that can financially support them in the case of a drastic change in income.

Submitted by Cristiane Shirayama (cristiane.shirayama@fgv.br) on 2011-06-03T17:14:32Z No. of bitstreams: 1 66080100262.pdf: 281247 bytes, checksum: 8f38e27453c9e851d57e12f6b09ea352 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Suzinei Teles Garcia Garcia(suzinei.garcia@fgv.br) on 2011-06-03T17:33:55Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 66080100262.pdf: 281247 bytes, checksum: 8f38e27453c9e851d57e12f6b09ea352 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Suzinei Teles Garcia Garcia(suzinei.garcia@fgv.br) on 2011-06-03T17:35:10Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 66080100262.pdf: 281247 bytes, checksum: 8f38e27453c9e851d57e12f6b09ea352 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2011-06-03T18:53:20Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 66080100262.pdf: 281247 bytes, checksum: 8f38e27453c9e851d57e12f6b09ea352 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-02-08 / This paper aims to analyze the relationship between household consumption and income in Brazil for the past 60 years. In order to do this it will be used the econometric methodology suggested by Bierens and Martins (2010) that consists in estimating an Autoregressive Vector with Error Correction Mechanism similar to the model proposed by Johansen(1988), but with the time varying cointegrated vector. This estimated model proved to be better compared to traditional analysis of Johansen (1988) and allowed better fit between consumption and income. / A pesquisa teve como objetivo analisar a relação entre consumo e renda agregados das famílias no Brasil para os últimos 60 anos. Para realizar esta análise, foi utilizado a metodologia econométrica sugerida por Bierens e Martins (2010), que consiste na estimação de Vetor Autoregressivo com Mecanismo de Correção de Erros (VECM) similar ao modelo proposto por Johansen (1988), porém permitindo que vetor de cointegração varie ao longo do tempo. Este modelo estimado mostrou-se melhor comparado à análise tradicional de Johansen (1988).

Essay I: This essay provides an overview of the history of the Swedish pension system. Starting with the implementation of the public pension system in 1913, it outlines the key components of each major pension reform up until today along with a discussion of the main trade-offs and concerns that policy makers have faced. It also describes the historical background of the four largest occupational pension plans in Sweden and the mutual influence between these plans and the public pension system.        Essay II: Despite the fact that the increasing involvement of the private sector in pension provision has brought more flexibility to the pay-out phase of retirement, little is known about the characteristics of those who choose to annuitize their pension wealth and those who do not. I combine unique micro-data from a large Swedish occupational pension plan with rich national administrative data to study the choice between life annuities and fixed-term payouts with a minimum payout length of 5 years for 183,000 retiring white-collar workers. I find that low accumulation of assets is strongly associated with the choice of the 5-year payout. Consistent with individuals selecting payout length based on private information about their mortality prospects, individuals who choose the 5-year payout are in worse health, exhibit higher ex-post mortality rates and have shorter-lived parents than annuitants. Individuals also seem to respond to large, tax-induced changes in annuity prices.            Essay III: This essay estimates the causal effect of postponing retirement on a wide range of health outcomes using Swedish administrative data on cause-specific mortality, hospitalizations and drug prescriptions. Exogenous variation in retirement timing comes from a reform which raised the age at which broad categories of Swedish local government workers were entitled to retire with full pension benefits from 63 to 65. The reform caused a remarkable shift in the retirement distribution of the affected workers, increasing the actual retirement age by more than 4.5 months. Instrumental variable estimation results show no effect of postponing retirement on the overall consumption of health care, nor on the risk of dying early. There is evidence, however, of a reduction in diabetes-related hospitalizations and in the consumption of drugs that treat anxiety. Essay IV (with Per Engström): The consumption based method to estimate underreporting among self-employed, introduced by Pissarides and Weber (1989), is one of the workhorses in the empirical literature on tax evasion/avoidance. We show that failure to account for transitory income fluctuations in current income may overestimate the degree of underreporting by around 40 percent. Previous studies typically use instrumental variable methods to address the issue. In contrast, our access to registry based longitudinal income measures allows a direct approach based on more permanent income measures. This also allows us to evaluate the performance of a list of instruments widely used in the previous literature. Our analysis shows that capital income is the most suitable instrument in our application, while education and housing related measures do not seem to satisfy the exclusion restrictions.

This thesis investigates which factors affecting savings behavior by using a fixed effect regression model. To see what affects the household savings rate the following independent variables is considered: Natural logarithm of trend per capita income, natural logarithm of deviation from trend per capita income, growth of disposable income, real interest rate, inflation, wealth in relation to household disposable income, foreign savings in relation to disposable income, dependency ratio and human development index. To see whether changes of human development within a county impacts the household´s savings ratio this variables was included in a separate regression. To avoid possible biasedness from ordinary least square, a panel data technique called fixed effect regression model is used. The investigated time period is between year 1999 and 2016 and to make a restriction, variables from 25 developed countries were studied. The involved economic theories in this work are Keynesianism, permanent income hypothesis and the savings theory behind Maslow´s behavioral pyramid. The result made by using this study is that growth in income and foreign savings in relation to disposable income is insignificant and can´t be used in explaining the differences between household´s savings. Human development index within a country has a negative effect on the savings ratio but a conclusion regarding whether changes in HDI´s does affect savings can´t be made and more research within that field is needed.

Cette thèse étudie les déterminants de l’épargne des ménages, à la fois dans leur dimension microéconomique et macroéconomique, en coupe et en panel. L’étude de ces déterminants ne se limite pas au cas français, mais est également étendue à la zone euro, au Royaume-Uni et aux États-Unis. Le premier chapitre introductif rappelle les principaux modèles et théories de l’épargne développés depuis les années 1930, et compare les approches macroéconomique et microéconomique de l’épargne des ménages. Les principales différences entre ces deux approches sont mises en exergue, ainsi que les hypothèses qui sous-tendent le passage du niveau micro au niveau agrégé. Dans un deuxième chapitre, on teste d'abord l’homogénéité des comportements d'épargne en étudiant les liens entre taux d’épargne et revenu (courant et permanent) des ménages français, à partir des données de l'enquête INSEE Budget de famille 2011. On met ensuite empiriquement en évidence et on quantifie une épargne de précaution liée au risque sur le revenu. Dans un troisième chapitre, on s’attache à décrire et à expliquer l’hétérogénéité des comportements d’épargne à l’intérieur et entre les pays européens, à partir des déterminants socio-économiques et des variables de protection sociale. On cherche ainsi à mettre en évidence un effet d'éviction entre épargne publique et épargne privée. Le dernier chapitre exploite la dimension macroéconomique de l'épargne et de la consommation : on passe en revue les principaux déterminants de la consommation (donc de l’épargne), avec une analyse particulière de l’effet de richesse, c’est à dire l’impact du patrimoine financier et immobilier sur le comportement d’épargne. / This PhD dissertation investigates the determinants of households’ savings, both in theirmicro- and macroeconomic dimensions, on cross section and panel data. This analysis is notrestricted to the French case, but also examines the euro area, the United Kingdom and theUnited States. The introduction recalls main models and theories of savings which were developed in the 1930s, and compares the macroeconomic and microeconomic approaches of households’ savings. The main discrepancies between these two approaches are highlighted, as well as the hypotheses which underpin the aggregation of data. In the second chapter, I investigate the relationship between savings rates and (current and permanent) income to test the homogeneity of French households’ behaviours. Then I highlight and measure precautionary savings related to the income risk. In the third chapter, I describe the heterogeneity of savings behaviours within and between European countries, by analyzing social and economic determinants and social protection variables. I try to highlight a crowding-out effect between public and private savings. The last chapter is on the macroeconomic side: the main determinants of consumption (and savings) are scanned, with an emphasis on wealth effect – i.e. the effect of financial wealth and real estate wealth on savings rate.

Made available in DSpace on 2010-04-20T20:59:59Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 4 Regis Augusto Hideshi Abe.pdf.jpg: 2223 bytes, checksum: 2854124c57e695ce52bf460970864c3c (MD5) Regis Augusto Hideshi Abe.pdf.txt: 62572 bytes, checksum: 862464582587bd7801be3830258789c6 (MD5) license.txt: 4712 bytes, checksum: 4dea6f7333914d9740702a2deb2db217 (MD5) Regis Augusto Hideshi Abe.pdf: 232796 bytes, checksum: c10e5a8ac8150a214101dc62b3f6cff2 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-01-27T00:00:00Z / A teoria de consumo indica que os indivíduos maximizam sua utilidade se suavizarem o consumo ao longo da vida. Manter o consumo constante seria melhor que se sujeitar à instabilidade. Entretanto a maior parte dos testes realizados com informações brasileiras contraria esta hipótese. Este trabalho apresenta resultados diferentes, com indícios de suavização do consumo em um período recente. Para a realização deste trabalho, foram utilizados dados nacionais extraídos do site do IPEA (IPEADATA), onde estão disponíveis séries de consumo, renda, juros, crédito, assim como deflatores. As séries foram tratadas de maneira a se padronizarem como trimestrais, incorporando o período entre primeiro trimestre de 1991 e o segundo trimestre de 2009. Com o auxílio de técnica de estimação de quebras estruturais, ficaram evidentes os momentos em que as séries macroeconômicas tiveram mudanças significativas. Desta maneira, o histórico de informações foi subdividido conforme o panorama econômico. Cada período deste histórico foi submetido a um processo de estimação de crescimento de consumo a partir de crescimento de renda, juros e crescimento de crédito. A teoria de suavização do consumo sugere que a estimação deveria resultar em estimativas não significantes, pois o consumo não estaria atrelado ao acesso ao credito ou variações temporárias da renda. O que se verificou foi que em um histórico mais distante, os resultados foram bastante parecidos com resultados observados em bibliografia. Entretanto, em um período mais recente o consumo estaria se desvencilhando da renda e do crédito. Isto sugere que a suavização do consumo pode estar se concretizando no Brasil. / Consumption theory suggests that individuals maximize their utility to smooth their consumption along their lives. Constant consumption would be better than instability. However most of the tests performed with Brazilian information contradict this hypothesis. This study presents different results, with evidence of consumption smoothing in a recent period. Brazilian data has been used in this study. Consumption, income, interest, credit and deflators have been extracted from the IPEA site (IPEADATA). Those series were standardized in a quarterly basis, comprehending the period from the first quarter of 1991 until the second quarter of 2009. By estimating structural breaks, it was possible to highlight what were the moments subjected to significant changes in economy. Thus, the historical data was divided according to the economic outlook. Each period of history has undergone a process of estimation of consumption growth on income growth, interest and credit growth. The theory of consumption smoothing assumes that the result estimates should not be significant, because the consumer would not be restricted to credit or temporary fluctuations in income. Results tell that in a further past, conclusions were very similar to literature. However, in a more recent period, consumption would be becoming independent of income and credit. This suggests that consumption smoothing may be becoming a reality in Brazil.

Submitted by Ellen Regina Steter (ellensteter@gmail.com) on 2013-09-19T23:37:58Z No. of bitstreams: 1 dissertacao.pdf - Adobe Acrobat Pro.pdf: 869504 bytes, checksum: 03db87faed4c751de45e0913d9c11657 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Suzinei Teles Garcia Garcia (suzinei.garcia@fgv.br) on 2013-09-20T12:59:20Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 dissertacao.pdf - Adobe Acrobat Pro.pdf: 869504 bytes, checksum: 03db87faed4c751de45e0913d9c11657 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-09-20T13:18:29Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 dissertacao.pdf - Adobe Acrobat Pro.pdf: 869504 bytes, checksum: 03db87faed4c751de45e0913d9c11657 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-08-23 / Considerando a teoria do consumo, especialmente a da renda permanente, a maximização da utilidade para o indivíduo ocorre quando ele consegue suavizar o seu consumo ao longo da vida. Dessa forma a estabilidade no consumo é preferida à momentos de expansão precedidos de retração. Estudos aplicados às séries brasileiras encontraram que consumo é impactado de maneira significativa pela renda corrente, não se comportando, portanto, apenas como um passeio aleatório. Uma das hipóteses sugeridas para explicar a dependência do consumo brasileiro à renda corrente seria a possibilidade de restrição à liquidez. O presente trabalho, teve como objetivo verificar se após a expansão creditícia experimentada pela economia brasileira, nos últimos anos, o crédito teria corroborado favoravelmente para a suavização do consumo das famílias. Para tanto, utilizou-se um banco de dados do primeiro trimestre de 1996 (pós implementação do PROER/PROES) até o primeiro trimestre de 2013. No decorrer do período abordado, foi possível identificar duas quebras estruturais no crédito, uma atrelada ao adento do crédito consignado e a outra referente ao impacto da crise financeira internacional. Dessa forma, a regressão considerando o consumo como variável dependente em função da renda, do crédito e da taxa de juros, foi estimada em três períodos distintos. A estimação nos três períodos mostrou que a expansão do crédito se tornou relevante para a regressão do consumo com o passar do tempo. Como exemplo, a variável crédito no primeiro período (1º.tri/96 até 1º.tri/04) não se mostrou significante para a regressão do consumo. Contudo no terceiro período (1º.tri/09 até 10.tri/13) o crédito se mostrou significante. Vale mencionar que o período de maior destaque para o crédito foi o terceiro, o mais recente. Sabidamente, coincidiu com a aceleração do crédito via bancos públicos em decorrência de um comportamento anticíclico (começou como resposta à crise financeira internacional do último trimestre de 2008). Com isso, para suavizar esse movimento anticíclico as regressões foram reestimadas considerando o crédito desagregado, entre privado e público. A conclusão obtida foi a mesma do exercício anterior. Assim, as estimações sugerem que o crédito (agregado e desagregado) ajudou na suavização do consumo das famílias brasileiras, especialmente no passado recente (terceiro período), quando a renda não foi significativa para a estimação do consumo. / Considering the consumption theory, specially the permanent income, the maximization utility for a individuals happens when he is able to mitigate the consumption during their lives. In this way the consumption smoothing is preferred to a moment of expansion preceding by retraction. Researches applied in brazilian series found that the consumption has a strong impact by the current income, doesn´t acting, therefore, merely as random walk. One of the hypothesis suggested to explain the dependence of the brazilian consumption of the current income would be the possibility of credit constraint. The present paper, had as objective verify if after the credit expansion experimented by the brazilian economy, in the last few years, the credit had corroborated in favour of the flexibility of the family consumption. For this, used 1996 database, first term ( after PROER/PROES implementation) until 2013 first term. However, it has been found that during the approached period, occurred two structural breaks in credit series. Thereby, the regression having the consumption as variable dependent in function of the credit, income and interest rate was estimated in three distinct periods. The evaluation in these three periods clearly demonstrated that the credit expansion became relevant for the consumption regression over the course of time. As example, a variable credit in the first period ( 1st term/96 until 1st term 04) wasn´t significant for the consumption regression. But, in the in the third ( 1st term/09 until 1st term 2013) the credit appeared significant. It´s worth mentioning that the top-of-mind period for credit was the third, the most recent. Wisely, coincided with the credit acceleration through goverment banks in consequence for an anti cyclic behavior (it starts as an answer to the international financial crisis in the last term 0f 2008). With this, to alleviate this anti cyclic movement the regression were estimated again considering only the disaggregated credit (private and government credit). The result was the same of the previous. So, the estimatios suggest that the credit helped alleviate the consumption of the brazilian families specially in the recent past, when income was not significant.

Essay I: This essay provides an overview of the history of the Swedish pension system. Starting with the implementation of the public pension system in 1913, it outlines the key components of each major pension reform up until today along with a discussion of the main trade-offs and concerns that policy makers have faced. It also describes the historical background of the four largest occupational pension plans in Sweden and the mutual influence between these plans and the public pension system.        Essay II: Despite the fact that the increasing involvement of the private sector in pension provision has brought more flexibility to the pay-out phase of retirement, little is known about the characteristics of those who choose to annuitize their pension wealth and those who do not. I combine unique micro-data from a large Swedish occupational pension plan with rich national administrative data to study the choice between life annuities and fixed-term payouts with a minimum payout length of 5 years for 183,000 retiring white-collar workers. I find that low accumulation of assets is strongly associated with the choice of the 5-year payout. Consistent with individuals selecting payout length based on private information about their mortality prospects, individuals who choose the 5-year payout are in worse health, exhibit higher ex-post mortality rates and have shorter-lived parents than annuitants. Individuals also seem to respond to large, tax-induced changes in annuity prices.            Essay III: This essay estimates the causal effect of postponing retirement on a wide range of health outcomes using Swedish administrative data on cause-specific mortality, hospitalizations and drug prescriptions. Exogenous variation in retirement timing comes from a reform which raised the age at which broad categories of Swedish local government workers were entitled to retire with full pension benefits from 63 to 65. The reform caused a remarkable shift in the retirement distribution of the affected workers, increasing the actual retirement age by more than 4.5 months. Instrumental variable estimation results show no effect of postponing retirement on the overall consumption of health care, nor on the risk of dying early. There is evidence, however, of a reduction in diabetes-related hospitalizations and in the consumption of drugs that treat anxiety. Essay IV (with Per Engström): The consumption based method to estimate underreporting among self-employed, introduced by Pissarides and Weber (1989), is one of the workhorses in the empirical literature on tax evasion/avoidance. We show that failure to account for transitory income fluctuations in current income may overestimate the degree of underreporting by around 40 percent. Previous studies typically use instrumental variable methods to address the issue. In contrast, our access to registry based longitudinal income measures allows a direct approach based on more permanent income measures. This also allows us to evaluate the performance of a list of instruments widely used in the previous literature. Our analysis shows that capital income is the most suitable instrument in our application, while education and housing related measures do not seem to satisfy the exclusion restrictions.