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Trade relations between China and the USA have been marked by conflict, especially since China’s membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO). These conflicts have been analyzed from a variety of perspectives, including the loss of jobs in the USA due to Chinese imports, competition in high technology sectors and the balance of trade. Conceptual frameworks have employed models of domestic differences as well as models of international power distribution. Among domestic differences examined are the existence of state-owned enterprises in China compared to the domination of the USA economy by private firms, the large role of the Communist Party in China and the influence of labor and environmental and labor groups in the USA. Power distribution theories focus on the systemic effects of the distribution of power on trade openness and on the pattern of intra-bloc versus between-bloc trade. This paper aims to examine the role of macroeconomic policy factors in China and the USA, in particular, the role of national patterns of savings, investment and consumption (both private and government). The paper concludes that insofar as the balance of trade is an important component of the trade conflict, domestic macroeconomic factors continue to be important. The resolution of the conflict will have to take into account the respective macroeconomic policies of China and the USA.

The design is an analytic case study of US–China trade relations with a particular focus on the balance of trade. The conceptual framework employed involves an analysis of macroeconomic policy categories, especially the overall pattern of savings (household, firm and government), investment and consumption. Process tracing over time since China's membership in the WTO is carried out with an eye toward the relationship between the balance of trade and macroeconomic policy.

The main findings are that there is a strong relation between the respective macroeconomic policies of the USA and China and their trade relations. The domestic political economy of the USA encourages consumption and a low rate of savings. The opposite is true of China where household income is low by design and national savings are high. China depends on the USA to consume what is not consumed domestically. The USA depends on Chinese imports for additional consumption encouraged by its low rate of savings. The two economies are locked in a mutual dependence.

Key research implications are that there should be more focus on domestic macroeconomic policies since these are the root causes of the trade imbalance. This is not to say that trade frictions centering on jobs, subsidies and competition in high technology are unimportant. However, without the resolution of differences in the management of macroeconomic policies, trade conflicts between the USA and China will continue.

Practical implications are huge, in some ways much more important than the academic implications. Macroeconomic policy differences in savings, investment, government spending, taxation and infrastructure are important. Furthermore, there are available tools in both China and the USA to manage the macroeconomy, particularly, monetary and fiscal policy.

One implication of this paper is that satisfaction or dissatisfaction of workers is dependent on income distribution which in turn affects trade. Treatment of people in different socioeconomic categories, such as the elderly, the young, and those at working age are a function of macroeconomic policies.

Many people have written about macroeconomics. It is a conventional subfield of economics. The originality of this paper lies in its advocacy of a shift of focus and attention and in the argument that traditional macroeconomics is related to trade. Despite its importance, macroeconomics has not been the center of attention for most political scientists, though economists have made it more central.

Notes with concern the current negative rate of personal saving in the USA, reviews previous research on factors affecting savings and explores the interrelationships between personal savings and the returns on stock and family homes. Develops a mathematical model and applies it to 1980‐2000 data using causality tests, cointegration and error‐correction models. Finds a significant, negative causal relationship from stock returns to savings and a possible positive causal relationship from returns on homes, although the latter was not supported by tri‐variate analysis. Concludes that changes in a household’s stock returns are adjusted through changes in savings.

This study examines the effects of normative social beliefs, customer satisfaction with service quality and demographic variables on the long‐term savings behavior of rural households some 15 years after the 1981 large‐scale promotion of the rural bank program in Ghana. The results show that considerations of these influences beyond income alone provide stronger predictive power, over and above that of income. In addition, it appears that the negative effects of social beliefs on savings behavior were ameliorated significantly as a result of the promotional program. Similarly, customer satisfaction with the level of service quality was also positively correlated with the level of savings. However, the effects of the marketing approach used in Ghana differed significantly across state owned commercial banks, foreign multinational banks, and rural banks. The implications for enhancing the role of promotional marketing in changing savings attitudes in rural savings mobilization programs in Ghana and elsewhere in Africa are discussed.

Investigates school‐leavers and students, but more importantly, primary groups of schoolchildren are being targeted, because of their growing power as consumers – even affecting others in purchasing products – such as own family members. Chronicles that the majority of children seem to save extensively at school or the Post Office, building society or bank, etc., and examines this in detail – particularly school savings schemes. Looks at different school systems, numbers of children involved and schools without a scheme. Discusses further pros and cons of saving schemes and also the implications of these for bank marketing. Concludes that the present project has been essentially exploratory, but further research might well be required.

The study aims to explore the savings behaviour of Indian farmers. An attempt is also made to inspect the effect of financial literacy (FL) and financial confidence (FC) on the savings behaviour of the farmers in India.

This study used secondary data on 10,263 Indian farmers from Financial Inclusion Insights, 2017 database. Relevant statistical techniques and ordered probit regression were used to unfold the effect of FL and FC on the savings behaviour of farmers.

The outcome of the study revealed that the majority of the Indian farmers exhibited poor levels of FL and FC. Of the total, 42.99% were found to save regularly. FL and FC were observed to play instrumental roles in steering the savings behaviour of the Indian farmers. Household size, financial shocks, gender, farm ownership, income, household financial decision-making process, religion and educational attainment have emerged to be significant predictors of the savings behaviour of Indian farmers.

The present study makes an original contribution to the extant literature by unfolding the savings behaviour of Indian farmers and the effect of FL and FC on such behaviour using a rich sample of 10,263 farmers for the first time.

This study investigates how students' propensity towards indebtedness affects their savings behaviour. Additionally, the study examines the moderating role of financial literacy in the relationship between propensity towards indebtedness and savings behaviour.

Questionnaires were administered to undergraduate students from the University of Ghana Business School. A total of 370 valid responses were used in the empirical analysis. The hypothesised relationships were tested using partial least square – structural equation modelling.

The structural model results suggest that students' propensity towards indebtedness is negatively related to their savings behaviour. Further, the results demonstrate that financial literacy moderates the negative association between students' propensity towards debt and savings behaviour.

This study highlights students' propensity towards indebtedness and how it impacts their savings behaviour.

The purpose of this study is to find out the effect of consumption tax on savings behavior especially on the people who are close to their retirement.

The authors analyze the response in spending and retirement saving using a difference-in-differences regression methodology. The authors use the year since the Public Provident Fund (PPF) enrollment date for each individual as a random assignment to identify the service tax policy's causal impact. Therefore, this variable is a continuous variable defined as an individual's age until the end of the restrictions when people can withdraw money from their retirement savings account PPF without any penalty. The treatment variable is the service tax shock (increase in service tax) that happened effective 1st April 2015.

The authors find a significant effect of a change in the service tax rate on individuals' spending and PPF saving behavior. On average, individuals lower their consumption by about 14% and increase their PPF savings by 16% in response to the increase in the service tax rate. The authors find substantial heterogeneity in effect across different types of individuals. The effect is more pronounced for people closer to their retirement and needy people (defined as individuals with low traditional savings account balances).

The authors studied the effect of consumption tax on one category of savings (PPF) only. There are other savings instruments available in India. The data for those were not available to us.

This paper not only throws light on the consumption and savings behaviour of the individuals, but will also help the policy maker for framing appropriate fiscal policy.

Using a unique and proprietary data from a large bank in India, the authors analyze the effect of a tax policy change on households' consumption and retirement savings behavior. The authors find that households reduce their consumption by 14% and increase their voluntary retirement savings (Public Provident Fund aka PPF) by 16% in response to an increase in the service tax policy. Individuals close to their retirement age (55 years of age and above) and without any withdrawal restrictions from their PPF account tend to reduce their expenditures more and save more. Individuals with financial constraints and withdrawal restrictions do not reduce their expenditures significantly. To the best of the authors’ knowledge no study was done on this.

The objective of the study is to explore the determinants of savings and their relative importance in Saudi Arabia.

The stationarity of the data has been tested using augmented Dickey–Fuller (ADF) tests. Autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) technique has been applied to establish the long run and short run relationships. Stability of savings function has been tested by applying CUSUM and CUSUMSQ techniques.

Results of ARDL identify the important factors affecting savings behaviour in Saudi Arabia. According to the results, the growth rate of GDP, the interest rate, foreign direct investment (FDI) and budget surplus positively affect savings with the last two having the most influence on domestic savings. The coefficient of the dependency ratio is negative in conformity with the theory. Similarly, the coefficient of the inflation rate is also negative.

There is limited availability of data since only 41 years’ annual data are available.

In the light of the results, it is recommended that in order to increase savings, the government should adopt policies to attract FDI, increase the GDP growth rate and decrease the dependency ratio and inflation.

Government needs to discourage larger family sizes to encourage savings in the light of the result of negative impact of the dependency ratio on savings. In order to decrease the dependency ratio, more family members especially women should be encouraged to participate in the labour market.

There is a scarcity of research for Saudi Arabia on the critical issue of determinants of domestic savings. This is a pioneering study exploring important determinants of savings in Saudi data.

The peer review history for this article is available at https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-08-2021-0493.

Many autistic adults experience unemployment, which may impact their financial circumstances. However, no research has examined their personal financial circumstances. Therefore, this study aims to examine the self-reported income, savings and debt of autistic adults living in Australia, as well as the demographic associates and predictors of income and savings.

Sixty-four autistic adults aged 18–67 years (M_age = 32.78, SD_age = 11.36) completed an online survey containing questions relating to their financial circumstances and the autism spectrum quotient-short.

Overall, the authors found that many autistic adults are financially disadvantaged. The mode of income levels was below AU$25,000, which is substantially lower than the mean annual Australian full-time income of AU$89,123. Higher savings was associated with not having any debt or having a greater ability to repay debt. Autism traits were positively associated with income levels. As predicted, being employed was associated with and predicted higher income. People who were employed were four times more likely to have a higher income than unemployed individuals. The authors did not find a relationship between having a co-occurring mental condition with income or savings. The authors also did not find a significant association between employment status and savings.

These research findings have implications on how we can improve the financial circumstances of autistic adults and provide additional evidence for the importance of increasing employment opportunities for autistic individuals.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to examine the personal financial circumstances of autistic adults.

Energy-efficient retrofitting of existing buildings is an inexpensive way of reducing energy consumption and mitigating climate change impacts. The purpose of this study is to examine electricity savings and carbon dioxide (CO₂) emission reduction potentials of energy-efficient retrofit measures for surveyed two large shopping malls in India.

A techno-economic model was developed to estimate the electricity savings achieved due to energy-efficient retrofit measures in shopping malls that were surveyed in 2017. Alternative scenarios were constructed based on capital cost and cost of conserved energy (CCE) value for retrofit measures: cheapest replacement, best available technology and best value for money. The life-cycle electricity and CO₂ emission savings and payback period for end-use retrofit measures were evaluated.

The estimated average electricity savings were around 39–56% for various retrofit measures across all three scenarios while the average CO₂ emission reductions were around 50–125 kt-CO₂. Retrofits to light-emitting diode lights and air conditioners with inverter technology offered more life-cycle electricity savings. Paybacks for most lighting end-use measures were estimated to be within 1.5 years while for most space conditioning end-use measures were between 1 and 4 years.

The primary survey-based comprehensive research makes an exclusive contribution by estimating life-cycle electricity savings and CO₂ emission reductions for energy-efficient retrofit measures of lighting and space cooling end-use appliances for existing shopping malls. The present research methodology can also be deployed in other types of commercial buildings and in residential buildings to estimate electricity savings from energy-efficient retrofit measures.