ABSTRACT
Keynes thought it best to think in terms of “decisions to consume (or to refrain from consuming) rather than of decisions to save”. This article, written jointly with a graduate student, J. R. Wilson, suggested that this negative or residual conception of saving had been carried too far. The level of spending and therefore of economic activity is influenced by deliberate saving decisions of which the increasingly institutionalised forms of contractual saving are the most important example.
