Holiday effects on household savings
Date
2009-03-31
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Abstract
The Philippines has been known for its strong cultural and traditional values, and widespread practice of celebrating holidays. Recent surveys and studies on household saving behavior suggest that there is growing importance on people's motivation to save for the holiday. This paper studies how the number holiday affects the household saving behavior in the Philippines. Saving is an important instrument for consumption and reducing vulnerability to income shortfall (Orbeta 2006). We test our hypothesis that during longer holiday periods, savings rate will be high because people tend to save more to fund their holiday vacations. This study aims to answer how the number of holidays affects household savings and to find out if they have strong correlation with each other. The general motivation for this study is to understand the relationship of holidays in the saving patterns in the Philippines. In determining this relation it will create useful information on how people utilize their savings during holiday. Using a cross-sectional data, we conduct an Ordinary Least Squares Estimation on the determinants of savings. Holidays turns out to be insignificant in the regression with other determinants of saving. Including interaction terms in the regression resulted to~ varying effects on the magnitude of change induced by the number of holidays.
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Keywords
Holiday effects, Household savings, Household spending, Household expenditure, Celebrating holidays