National culture and saving: How collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, and future orientation play roles

Abstract

This research study seeks to understand the important contribution of culture to national saving rates. Specifically, we investigate the roles of three key dimensions of culture, namely collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, and future orientation. The data of 16 countries during the period of 2010–2018 employed herein show robustly and significantly positive impact of future orientation but negative impact of uncertainty avoidance on savings ratio. However, the results concerning how collectivism plays role are not robust. With the collectivism variable from the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) Survey, we document negative effect on savings ratio, which is contrast to the findings of positive effect when we employ alternative measures of collectivism from two other surveys.