A Theory of Saving under Risk Preference Dynamics (opens in new tab)

Empirical evidence shows that wealthy households have substantially higher saving rates and markedly lower marginal propensity to consume (MPC) than other groups. Existing theory cannot account for this pattern without jointly imposing restrictive assumptions on returns, discounting, and preferences. In this paper, we develop a general theory of optimal savings with preference shocks and identify a novel mechanism through which stochastic ri...