Applied Economics: Health shocks and cash holdings
Published: 9 March 2022
23 March. Professor Alessandra Guariglia, University of Birmingham
Professor Alessandra Guariglia, University of Birmingham
'Health shocks and cash holdings' (with L. Tian and N. Horsewood)
Wednesday 23 March, 3pm - 4.30pm
Zoom online seminar
Register at business-events@glasgow.ac.uk
Abstract
We are the first to investigate how health shocks relate to cash holdings. Using three waves of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study over the period 2013-2018, we document that, for middle-aged and elderly people living in rural China, the onset of an acute health condition is associated with a 2.7 percentage point higher probability of holding only cash as a safe asset, and a 2.1 percentage point higher proportion of safe assets held in the form of cash. These results are robust to using different samples and estimation methods. We also find that ex-post reimbursement of medical expenses and lack of bank accessibility may drive the association between health shocks and cash holdings.
Biography
Alessandra Guariglia is Professor of Financial Economics at the University of Birmingham. She has been Head of the Department of Economics at that same university from 2012 to 2015, and Head of the Departments of Economics and Accounting & Finance at the University of Durham between 2009 and 2012. Prior to that, she has worked at the Universities of Nottingham, Kent, and Essex. She obtained her PhD from Boston University in 1995. Her current areas of research include the links between macroeconomic activity and finance, firm behavior under imperfect capital markets, the economics of transition in China, household saving and consumption decisions, and health economics. She was an associate editor of the European Journal of Finance and the Journal of Banking and Finance from 2011 to 2015. Her research has been published in journals such as the Journal of International Economics, the Journal of Development Economics, the Review of Finance, the Journal of Corporate Finance, and Social Science and Medicine.
Further information: business-events@glasgow.ac.uk
First published: 9 March 2022
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