Household Savings and Portfolio Choices in Developing Countries: The Impact of Ill-Health, Income Uncertainty, and Credit Constraints

本研究使用来自巴基斯坦农村的家庭数据，分析了发展中经济体家庭储蓄和投资组合决策的决定因素。虽然在这个主题上有大量高质量的研究，但这个项目将在一些重要的方面扩展这些文献。首先，虽然现有的许多文献关注的是农作物收入波动对储蓄的影响，但本研究认识到，家庭面临着其他几个同样重要的风险来源。它将区分一个这样的来源，即家庭成员的疾病，并将健康状况不佳对储蓄的影响与归因于其他来源的收入波动的影响进行对比。其次，它将对个人收入的不确定性进行估计，并利用这些估计来调查储蓄对这种不确定性的反应。第三，分析信贷市场不完善在解释投资组合选择中的作用。最后，它建议通过允许储蓄的决定因素在不同结构的家庭中有所不同，将关于家庭经济作用的文献与储蓄文献统一起来。?？

9809281 Kochar This research analyzes the determinants of the savings and portfolio decisions of households in developing economies, using household data from rural Pakistan. While there is a body of high quality research on this topic, this project will extend this literature in a number of important dimensions. First, while much of the existing literature focuses on the effects of crop income volatility on savings, this research recognizes that households face several other equally important sources of risk. It will distinguish one such source, the illness of household members, and contrast the effect of ill-health on savings to that of income volatility attributable to other sources. Second, it will develop estimates of the uncertainty in individual incomes and use these to investigate the responsiveness of savings to such uncertainty. Third, it will analyze the role of credit market imperfections in explaining portfolio choices. Finally, it proposes to unify the literature on the economic role of the household with the savings literature, by allowing the determinants of savings to vary across households distinguished by structure. ??