  Why do household saving rates differ so much across countries? This
micro-level question has global implications: countries that systematically
"oversave" export capital by running current account surpluses. In the
recipient countries, interest rates are thus too low and financial stability is
put at risk. Existing theories argue that saving is precautionary, but tests
are limited to cross-country comparisons and are not always supportive. We
report the findings of an original survey experiment. Using a simulated
financial saving task implemented online, we compare the saving preferences of
a large and diverse sample of Chinese-Canadians with other Canadians. This
comparison is instructive given that Chinese-Canadians migrated from, or
descend from those who migrated from, a high-saving environment to a
low-savings, high-debt environment. We also compare behavior in the presence
and absence of a simulated "welfare state," which we represent in the form of
mandatory insurance. Our respondents exhibit behavior in the saving task that
corresponds to standard economic assumptions about lifecycle savings and risk
aversion. We find strong evidence that precautionary saving is reduced when a
mandatory insurance is present, but no sign that Chinese cultural influences -
represented in linguistic or ethnic terms - have any effect on saving behavior.
