El ahorro por motivo precaución en las regiones españolas durante la Gran Recesión

Abstract

In this chapter, we show new evidence as regards the existence of a precautionary motive for saving in the Spanish economy during the Great Recession, using regional data. The literature on the effects of uncertainty on saving decisions has not yet reached a consensus on which are the most appropriate variables to measure future income uncertainty, even though the use-of-the-unemployment rate, as a proxy of the probability of losing the job (and hence, future income) has gained popularity. We analy se the evolution of regional saving rates in high and low unemployment regions, finding a different behaviour: even though low unemployment regions save more, high unemployment regions exhibit a more intense precautionary saving motive. Additionally, our results are robust to the type of labour uncertainty measure used in the empirical models.