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Arab Journal of Administration المجلة العربية للإدارة

Abstract

This paper has analyzed the determinants of national savings in Saudi Arabia during the period 1980-2010. The ADF test is used to investigate the stationary of all time series, and after that, we estimated unrestricted VAR model. The results of the estimated VAR model provide evidence that the growth rate of per capita income, population growth, and financial depths have positive influence on national savings in Saudi Arabia during the period study. On the other hand, macroeconomic uncertainty, as measured by the inflation indicates a negative but insignificant effect on national saving rate. Foreign reserves ratio appears to have a negative effect on national savings, which implies that foreign saving may tend to act as a substitute to national savings. Moreover,the results of our study confirm that budget deficit ratio has a negative and statistically significant effect on the national saving ratio, which does not support the Ricardian hypothesis due to the limited use of taxes as a tool of fiscal policy in Saudi Arabia. This result suggests that government should use fiscal policy to reduce budget deficit, and restructure government expenditure in the way that can boost private savings and thus offset the negative effect on national savings.

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