by
Binglin Gong, Fudan University
Monday, June 13 2016 | 2:00 - 3:30 PM | Room 337, HSBC Business School
Abstract
We use a series of laboratory experiments to study the hypothesis of the competitive saving motive proposed by Wei and Zhang (2011) and Du and Wei (2013). In a laboratory setting, we can easily change the sex ratio exogenously and consider both cases of excess men and those of excess women. We confirm the basic prediction of the hypothesis that a rise in the sex ratio leads to a rise in the aggregate savings rate but find some interesting asymmetries between men and women. We also separately identify the competitive saving motive and a pure hedging motive and find that the hedging induced savings is negligible. Finally, we investigate the effect of heterogeneous incomes on competitive savings, something that is hard to obtain analytical results in the theory.
