Determinants of savings in ASEAN countries

Abstract

This paper investigates the trends of domestic saving in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Philippines. These countries have shown steady rises in their domestic saving rate in the ASEAN community. With the use of fixed effect models, this paper empirically examines the economic determinants underlying the saving trends in this group during the period from 2000 to 2015. The findings reveal that GDP per capita and inflation contribute the most to the rise of saving rate. Another remarkable evidence found is that decreasing dependency young ratio increases the saving rate during the observed period. Other factors, dependency old ratio, real interest rate and unemployment rate show no signals of having a significant impact on the domestic saving rate in the selected countries.