Despite the very long history of research on heritable traits, we still know very little about genetic effects on judgment and choice, including consumer decision making. Building on recent advances in epigenetics, we hypothesize that people inherit a general prudence tendency, which affects their predisposition to choose options that vary on the prudence dimension. We use a classic twins study...

This paper explores empirically whether Japanese consumers became more prudent in the second half of the 1990s, a decade in which Japan registered historically low economic growth. Employing the methodology developed by Dynan (1993), this study uses microlevel data from the Family Savings Survey and the Family Income and Expenditure Survey to estimate the coefficient of prudence for Japanese ho...

Saving decisions are made jointly by household members who generally earn risky incomes. Consequently, to interpret saving patterns it is crucial to analyze the relationship between intrahousehold risk sharing and intertemporal choices. To that end in this paper the household is characterized as a group of agents with possibly heterogeneous preferences making efficient decisions. Two results ar...

The countercyclical pattern of saving in Thailand the 1990s and 2000s raised questions about household behaviors country. Using constructed pseudo-panel data sets from Thai Household Socioeconomic Surveys (SESs) 1992 to 2011, this paper estimates intensity precautionary motive, measured by coefficient relative prudence households Thailand. By using a dynamic approach address concerns with regar...