The cultural origin of saving behavior

Joan Costa-Font, Paola Giuliano and Berkay Özcan ()

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Traditional economic interpretations have not been successful in explaining differences in saving rates across countries. One hypothesis is that savings respond to cultural specific social norms. The accepted view in economics so far is that culture does not have any effect on savings. We revisit this evidence using a novel dataset, which allows us to study the saving behavior of up to three generations of immigrants in the United Kingdom. Against the backdrop of existing evidence, we find that cultural preferences are an important explanation for cross-country differences in saving behavior, and their relevance persists up to three generations.

JEL-codes: N0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-09-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-evo, nep-gro, nep-his, nep-hme, nep-ltv and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Published in PLOS ONE, 12, September, 2018, 13(9), pp. e0202290. ISSN: 1932-6203

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/90225/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Cultural Origin of Saving Behavior (2020)
Working Paper: The Cultural Origin of Saving Behavior (2020)
Journal Article: The cultural origin of saving behavior (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:90225

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