Contemporary Finance & Economics ›› 2017, Vol. 0 ›› Issue (02): 313-.

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Habit Formation, Disaster Risk and Precautionary Savings: International Comparison and China’s Experience

YUAN Jing1, CHEN Guo-jin2   

  1. (1. Shandong Institute of Business and Technology, Yantai 264005; 2. Xiamen University, Xiamen 361005, China)
  • Received:2016-08-08 Published:2021-01-21

Abstract: By constructing the continuous time DSGE model and considering the disaster risk factors and the formation of consumption habits, this paper adopts the waveform relaxation algorithm to study and compare the optimal consumption functions and savings rates between China and other 7 countries in the world in the face of disaster risk uncertainty. The results show that the model fitting effect is good, and the model will become more robust when the habit formation factors are blended in. The disaster risks have become a source of uncertainty affecting the changes of consumer wills of spending and savings. The changes of Chinese residents’ consumption and savings in the face of disaster risks are stronger than those in the 7 other countries around the world, the savings will of China’s residents is the highest, with the savings rate as high as 85%. The changes of China’s optimal consumption function will have a bigger gap if the habit formation is not considered, but the changes of the optimal consumption function of the other 7 countries in the world will have a narrowed gap if the habit formation is not considered. The savings will of Chinese residents is still the highest, with the savings rate up to 87%. The reason is that the formation of consumption habits is taken into consideration, thus when faced with disasters the consumers will be even more afraid of the impact of the disaster on their future life, therefore their willingness to save will be enhanced. If the government provides smaller proportion of financial subsidies, the government financial subsidies will have a very strong effect on resisting the disaster risks, and the consumer willingness to save can be effectively reduced. However, if the government provides larger proportion of financial subsidies, the results will be counterproductive.

Key words: habit formation; disaster risk; precautionary savings; financial subsidy; DSGE model