Precautionary Savings and Self-Selection: Evidence from the German Reunification "Experiment"*
利用德国统一这一外生事件和公务员制度特点，检验预防性储蓄理论，发现风险厌恶者自我选择进入低风险职业，显著降低了总预防性财富持有。
We combine particular features of the German civil service with the unique event of German reunification to test the theory of precautionary savings and to quantify the importance of self-selection into occupations due to differences in risk aversion. In the presence of self-selection, failing to control for risk aversion in empirical tests of precautionary savings results in a bias that could lead to a false rejection of the theory. We exploit the fact that for individuals from the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) German reunification in 1990 caused an exogenous reassignment of income risks. Our findings suggest that self-selection of risk averse individuals into low-risk occupations is economically important and decreases aggregate precautionary wealth holdings significantly.