SU Econ Seminar

Dear colleague,

You are cordially invited to a

SABANCI UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES

ECONOMICS SEMINAR

Thursday, October 28 2004

Speaker:    Selahattin Imrohoroglu - University of Southern California

Title:      The Japanese Saving Rate

Time:       15:30

Place:      2034, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Sabanci University

Abstract:

In this paper, we use two different models to study the time path of the saving rate in Japan between 1961-1998. Our results indicate that both an infinite horizon, complete markets setup and an overlapping generations model with incomplete markets are able to generate saving rates that are remarkably similar to the data during this period. We conduct counterfactual experiments to isolate the impact of several factors such as the social security system, fiscal policy, and total factor productivity growth on saving behavior. Our results identify changes in the growth rate of total factor productivity and the low initial capital stock as the main factors generating the time series behavior of the net national saving rate in Japan. In other words, it seems that there is nothing peculiar about the Japanese saving behavior.

You can download the full paper from our seminar page at

http://www.sabanciuniv.edu/fass/economics/events/sm.html