| Precautionary savings theory focuses on uncertainty to Residents’ savings andconsumption behavior, which had gotten a large number of verification since this theory wasput forward. The empirical results also showed that the precautionary savings ratios in Europeand the United States were much lower than in the East Asian countries. It’s not enough ofusing differences in economic development uncertainty to explain the deviation among differentcountries. A fairly intuitive inference is that residents with different culture background havedifferent sensitivities to uncertainty, then corresponding precautionary savings motive is notconsistent. Therefore, this paper attempts to make theory explanation and empirical test.This paper uses the Dynan’s (1993) precautionary savings model to estimate precautionarysavings motive intensity for36countries from1998to2007, verifying the existence ofprecautionary savings. Through the observation and comparison, we discovered a fewanomalies:(1) Japan, Korea, Singapore and other Asian countries with relatively developedeconomy and perfect social security have higher intensity of precautionary savings motive.(2)South American countries reduced intensity of precautionary savings motive after the9.11event occurs.(3)Asia and Africa countries reacted to economic crisis faster than United Stateswhere the crisis broke out first.To explain these phenomenon, in the control of macroeconomic variables on the basis weadded Hofstede culture index and built panel data model, proving that culture has the strongexplanatory power for precautionary savings motive intensity differences among countries andillustrating the way of each dimension influencing precautionary savings motive intensity. Theempirical results show that, in the three indicators representing time preference, risk preferenceand tolerance," uncertainty avoidance" and" Confucianism" showed a significant positivecorrelation with the precautionary motive intensity;" individualism" has a significant negativecorrelation."Power distance" and" gender equality" showed a significant positive correlation tothe precautionary motive intensity. All the results are consistent with the research hypothesis. |
