The nature of precautionary wealth
利用收入动态面板研究数据，发现收入不确定性更高的消费者确实持有更多财富，但财富对不确定性的敏感度远低于标准生命周期模型的预测，更符合缓冲存货储蓄模型。
This paper uses the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to provide some of the first direct evidence that wealth is systematically higher for consumers with predictably greater income uncertainty. However, the apparent pattern of precautionary wealth is not consistent with a standard parameterization of the life cucle model in which consumers are patient enough to begin saving for retirement early in life; wealth is estimated to be far less sensitive to uncertainty than implied by that model. Instead, our results suggest that over most of their working life time, consumers behave in accordance with the 'buffer-stock' models of saving described in Carroll (1992, 1997) or Deaton (1991), in which consumers hold wealth principally to insulate consumption against near-term fluctuations in income.