Suchergebnisse

The selfish life-cycle model or hypothesis is, together with the dynasty or altruism model, the most widely used theoretical model of household behavior in economics, but does this model apply in the case of a country like Japan, which is said to have closer family ties than other countries? In this paper, we first provide a brief exposition of the simplest version of the selfish life-cycle model and then survey the literature on household saving and bequest behavior in Japan in order to answer this question. The paper finds that almost all of the available evidence suggests that the selfish life-cycle model applies to at least some extent in all countries but that there is more consistent support for this model in Japan than in the United States and other countries. It then explores possible explanations for why the life-cycle model is more consistently supported in Japan than in other countries, attributing this finding to government policies, institutional factors, economic factors, demographic factors, and cultural factors. Finally, it shows that the findings of the paper have many important implications for economic modeling and for government tax and expenditure policies.

In this paper, I find (1) that Japan showed massive and persistent current account surpluses from at least 1981 and until at least 2011, (2) that Professor Ronald McKinnon was correct, at least in the case of Japan, and that these large and persistent current account surpluses were due primarily to Japan's large and persistent IS imbalances (the excess of saving over investment), (3) that the specific causes of the IS imbalances have changed dramatically over time, and (4) that future trends in Japan's IS imbalances (current account surpluses) are difficult to project but that they will probably not change dramatically in either direction in the foreseeable future.

In this paper, I conduct an international comparison of the financial health of households using data on household wealth and indebtedness for the Group of Seven (G7) countries and show that, even though household borrowings in Japan were the highest among the G7 countries, at least until 2000, household assets were also high in Japan, as a result of which household net worth and financial health in Japan were among the highest in the G7 countries. Turning to long-term trends in Japan over time, I find that Japan has shown a sharp increase over time in household borrowing, at least until 2000, and a sharp increase over time in both household assets and household net worth, at least until 1990. It is not clear whether the greater financial health of Japanese households is due more to culture or to government policies, institutions, and other non-cultural factors, but it appears that long-term trends over time in household assets, liabilities, and net worth in Japan can be explained much better by non-cultural factors than by culture.