Fatalistic Tendencies: An Explanation of Why People Don't Save

Author(s):  
Stephen Wu

Abstract This paper uses data from the 2001 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) and the 2000 World Values Survey (WVS) to analyze the role of fatalism in determining household savings behavior. SCF respondents who feel that luck has played an important role in their financial affairs are more likely to realize their need to save, but are less likely to actually do so. Cross-country evidence from the WVS shows that those who believe they have little freedom and control over their lives are also less likely to save. The results hold after controlling for a number of demographic and behavioral factors, and are consistent across income and wealth levels.

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 396-409 ◽  
Author(s):  
Su Hyun Shin ◽  
Kyoung Tae Kim

Using the 2007–2009 Survey of Consumer Finances panel dataset, we investigate whether and how changes in perceived income and saving motives are related to demand for household savings in the United States after the Great Recession. Households that perceive their current income as lower, relative to normal years are less likely to save than those who view that their income is the same as the reference point. This result holds only for those who experienced a significant negative income shock during the Great Recession. Among five major saving motives, saving for an emergency is an important factor in explaining the likelihood of saving. This study suggests that financial planners and educators should pay close attention to the role of households’ income perception and saving motives and should account for the resulting potential psychological biases in households’ saving decisions.


Author(s):  
Werner Schweibenz

Many museums want to use Web 2.0 applications or feel the pressure to do so. In doing so, they might encounter a significant problem as Web 2.0 is based on the notion of radical trust and unrestricted, equal participation, two concepts that are contrary to the museum’s traditional concepts of authority, communication and participation. Until recently, museums presumed control of their content. The crucial question is how much control of its content the museum can afford to lose, since they depend on their reputation for expertise and trustworthiness. The paper analyses the role of authority, its influence on traditional and future museum communication and its effects on participation and trust. The challenge for museums is to find a way to cede authority and control over content without losing status as trustworthy institutions and to open up for social media and user participation in order to attract new audiences and maintain existing ones.


2013 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 349-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sidi Bekkouche ◽  
Tayeb Benouaz ◽  
Mohamed Cherier ◽  
Maamar Hamdani ◽  
Mohamed Yaiche ◽  
...  

In desert regions, the orientation of buildings has an important influence in the inside air temperature. In the present work, we carry out a study on the influence of the buildings orientation as well as the thermal insulation on the internal temperature. To do so, we have considered the case where only the exposed walls are isolated. The main objective of the current work is to determine the temperatures of the building in question with and without thermal insulation. This study aims at assessing also the geographic parameter enhancing or damping the role of thermal inertia, providing a variety of results. As result, this work proves that stones play a contradictory role on thermal comfort. We have verified that thermal insulation is specified to reduce heat transfer through the building. Concerning the orientation, results indicates that the variation in orientation does not influence significantly the internal air temperature of a well thermally insulated building. Moreover, in hot period, whatever orientation considered, the phenomenon of overheating presents a serious problem to minimize consumption of energy and control of indoor temperature in case of building without insulation. The numerical data was compared to the experimental measurements in order to validate the mathematical model. In conclusion, to achieve a better thermal comfort arid and semi arid regions, the habitation will have to be situated in south flan of a hill to satisfy the two strategies (hot and cold).


Author(s):  
Thomas H. Stevenson ◽  
D. Anthony Plath

The purpose of this study is to help marketers recognize, understand and respond to the underserved African-American financial services market in the U.S. To do so, the study examines demographic trends and financial consumption patterns of African-American consumers, drawing on the most recent Survey of Consumer Finances to explore the principal differences between black and white households asset holdings and financial product and service preferences. Findings indicate that the African-American market has grown rapidly in size and viability over the past decade, and that African-American consumers differ markedly from their white counterparts in terms of financial product preferences and investment portfolio composition. The difference between the two segments is especially evident in the case of relatively more risky, but higher return, financial products. Based on these findings it is apparent that marketers should endeavor to reach this increasingly attractive but underserved segment of the U.S. financial services marketplace.


Author(s):  
Matthew J. Baker ◽  
Lisa M George

Abstract We examine whether advertising increases household debt by studying the initial expansion of television in the 1950's. Exploiting the idiosyncratic spread of television across markets, we use micro data from the Survey of Consumer Finances to test whether households with early access to television saw steeper debt increases than households with delayed access. Results indicate that exposure to television advertising increases the tendency to borrow for household goods and the tendency to carry debt. Television access is associated with higher debt levels for durable goods, but not with the total amount of non-mortgage debt. We provide suggestive evidence that increased labor supply may drive our results. The role of media in household debt may be greater than suggested by existing research.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. 94-99
Author(s):  
T. U. I. Peiris

This study investigated the effect of financial literacy on savings behavior, considering the mediation effect of intention to savings. A structured questionnaire was distributed among 206 employed individuals in the Colombo district, Sri Lanka. Three Stage Least Squares technique was initially used to analyze the structural equations model fitted to measure the hypothesized mediation effect. Then the result was rousted using path analysis. The findings indicated that financial literacy has a direct and positively significant influence on savings behavior. Moreover, the mediation effect of intention was also found as positively significant in the above relationship. This indicates that the knowledge of the financial system leads to good savings behavior, and especially it creates an intention to save more. Therefore, policymakers and financial institutions can consider enhancing financial literature among individuals as a worthy strategy when encouraging savings as it both encourages savings behavior and the intention to do so.


2020 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugo Rogelio Suppo ◽  
Leandro Gavião

ABSTRACT This article discusses the ambiguities of Brazil regarding the nuclear area during the administrations of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. To do so, the text uses the speeches of important politicians and members of government bodies to analyze the erratic positioning of Brasília in the face of the commitments made with Argentina since the Quadripartite Agreement (1991) and the founding of the Brazilian-Argentine Agency for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials (ABACC). Other source categories used are newspaper articles - Brazilian and international - and confidential files leaked by the non-governmental organization WikiLeaks. Finally, it is sought to evaluate the role of ABACC as an instrument to sustain the Argentinian “strategic patience” within the framework of the sensitive nuclear area.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 508-508
Author(s):  
Stephen Crystal

Abstract This study compares the effect of the 2008 recession and subsequent recovery across generational cohorts by evaluating age-cohort trajectories of income inequality. Using data from the 2007 to 2016 waves of the Survey of Consumer Finances, we examine the trajectory of inequality for the overall population and by cohort in years spanning the Great Recession and subsequent recovery. We find that increases in per-capita income and wealth observed at the population-level during the recovery were not reflected among households below the median, leading to increasing inequality. Within cohorts, we observe growing inequality within cohorts in their primary working years. Findings are consistent with a model of integrative cumulative dis/ advantage, which predicts increasing within-cohort inequality over the life course influenced both by persistent micro- and macro-level processes of increasing heterogeneity. Our analyses highlight the potential role of extreme business cycle fluctuations, booms and busts, to exacerbate this underlying process.


2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert B. Williams

Recognizing the specific ways that systemic racism has and continues to function in our society is essential to developing a political economy that effectively examines contemporary problems and issues, whatever they may be. To do so, this paper identifies key elements of an anti-racist perspective and uses them to illuminate critical aspects of our racial wealth gap. Given the nature of wealth – its inherent durability and transferability across generations – this paper demonstrates how the current racial wealth gap is the result of past wealth policies that privileged whites. Further, it demonstrates how our current wealth policies are not simply encouraging the concentration of wealth among the 1 percent, but also recreating a system of racial segmentation. In a time in which overtly racialized policies and laws are often illegal, our wealth policies now function as a modern version of past Jim Crow laws and norms. This paper relies on the Survey of Consumer Finances and Joint Committee on Taxation data to document its claims.


2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 260-273
Author(s):  
Paolo Di Betta

We investigate upon the influences exerted by politicians on the Board and on ownership structure, as an application of political power to corporations. We characterize moral governance as the joint result of these efforts on managerial turnover and ownership turnover. We comment upon two Italian clinical cases of private, listed firms in which politicians enter the scene when a major event occurs (i.e., reorganization, merger, and acquisition activity). Our model could serve as a guideline and checklist for insiders to interact with politicians. We suggest this could be of interest in countries where there is a common level ground – such as in Europe – but with different cultures on the role of the politician in the business environment. It could be an instrument to detect political intervention in the economy to be also used for cross-country comparisons of business environment and for assessing transparency of companies in developed and developing countries. Recent events from the financial crisis in 2008 have increased the urge to investigate these themes.


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