Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Water valves and personal savings


I looked at water shut-off valves a week ago and here they are while I'm trying to do econ.


Google will be pestering me with that shit for six months. Anyway, you can see that personal saving differs from the saving of a business or organization. Seeing as much was the point of this exercise.

I wonder if FRED has anything on business saving.

Tons. Here are three:


The "net private saving" of domestic business and the "undistributed corporate profits" portion of it run close together. The "gross" private saving of domestic business is about three times as big.

But wait... Gross saving? Net saving? Saving is saving, no? Either you save a dollar, or you spend it, right?

Here is something:


Not exactly what I was looking for, but useful. And then, in other results on that page I see the words "Here's gross private saving minus gross private investment — the ... deficit reduction will only intensify the problem of excessive savings relative ..." from Paul Krugman from 2011:
Let me just focus on the United States. Here’s gross private saving minus gross private investment — the private-sector financial surplus:


This huge move into surplus reflects the end of the housing bubble, a sharp rise in household saving, and a slump in business investment due to lack of customers.

Okay. So I'm thinking that

Gross Saving minus Gross Investment equals Net Saving

Gross Investment returns 3650 series at FRED. But no series name that begins with the words "Gross investment".

3 comments:

geerussell said...

It's so simple to understand income equals spending. Relabel income as "gross saving" and spending as "gross investment" though and it turns into a great mystery. The best I can figure is economists just like to torture people, especially themselves :)

You might find this handy, the components of gross investment and gross savings from the national accounts. In an image, account 6 here.

Taken from the national accounts.

The Arthurian said...

Excellent. Thank you Geerussell. I decided to read the whole thing, and now I am stuck. Here's the situation:

In Account 6, line 9, I have Personal saving with a value of -34.8 billion.

nipaguid p4: "For illustrative purposes, the tables show estimates for 2005 that are based on the latest published NIPA estimates."

I assume the -34.8 is the number for 2005 and I want to confirm my assumption at FRED.

I search FRED for personal saving and sort the list by title. Under the title "personal saving" three series are listed: annual, quarterly, and monthly.

I select Personal saving (A071RC1A027NBEA) (annual data) and set the units to "change, billions of dollars"

On the graph the number for 2005 is -166.3 billion. Not even close to -34.8.

I suppose the data may have been revised. Seems like a terribly big revision, but hey.

I go to ALFRED to compare the most recent vintage to a vintage from 2006. No good. The oldest vintage available is from 2013.

Now I'm stuck. Apparently I have confirmed only that I cannot read the nipaguid.

Any thoughts?

I am never sure which data series at FRED is the one I should be using.
But I don't see how I could have picked the wrong series this time.

The Arthurian said...

Thanks again, geerussell. I'm learnin'