Research On Consumer Behavior Of Chinese Urban Resident Under Uncertainty

After Keynes proposed consumer function firstly in 1936, the research on consumption was continuously done, and the fruit was enormous. The research on consumption is becoming the main contents in macroeconomics research by economists.After Keynes's absolute income hypothesis, western proposed relative income hypothesis, random walking hypothesis, life cycle theory and permanent income hypothesis in succession, these theories were pervasively used in practice. However, if we look forward to them, we will find that, they are based on the hypothesis of certainty and perfect market. In fact, from the opening and innovation, especially after market economy institution was built in China, the economy transition speeds up, which makes the consumers confront lots of uncertainty in the future, and the consumers can't have mortgage freely, for the sake of outside limited conditions. So the consumers'behaviors of our country have got variations, which is can't be explained by the traditional theory. The precautionary savings theory and the liquidity constraint theory in western consumer theory have the very reference and practice value if it's applied to research the consumption of urban residents in our country.Because of the"non-Pareto"character, the institution arrangement of innovation is transient, which brings uncertainty expectation to residents. In this paper, I explain the uncertainty of urban residents in the period of transition from the institution economics angle, and deeply analyze the uncertainty of future income, future expenditure and liquidity constraint of urban residents enhances their uncertainty feelings. On basis of above analysis, I apply the consumption model under uncertainty with the use of Chinese data, to reveal that Chinese urban residents have strong precautionary motive empirically. With comparison, we can get the conclusion that they confront more expenditure uncertainty than the income uncertainty, and the high savings and low consumption is relative to this in the latest development period. On basis of this, we can propose the policy suggestion to reduce the uncertainty and expand consumption accordingly.