I don't know how much of this is relevant to the query, but you can find the results of a search on Google Scholar here:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=propensity+to+save&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C15&as_sdtp=on

A couple of things from a couple of the articles returned:

Evsey Donmar's "Capital Expansion, rate of growth, and employment," in Econometrica:
"...marginal propensity to save, dY/dt is a function not of I, but of dI/dt."

Burnside & Dollar, "Aid, Policies, and Growth" (a working paper at SSRN):
"This is because the marginal propensity
to save in the developing country is high, even though the average propensity to save is small."

And more.

Don Coffin

-----Original Message-----
From: Societies for the History of Economics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Rob Tye
Sent: Tuesday, September 06, 2011 11:11 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [SHOE] Variation in the Propensity to Save

No reply to my last - perhaps my brief search was on the right track, and
the matter of Variation in the Propensity to Save really is little researched?

If anyone can direct me to another more appropriate forum, I would be grateful.

Meanwhile, here is an attempt to add some context to my question

The data that triggered my enquiry is to do with a big upsurge in what
appear to be savings hoards in coin in later 3rd century Romano-British
contexts.

I have reason to believe that this happened at a time when the volume of
cash in circulation had just increased by at least an order of magnitude,
but also, when the economy was still probably not fully monetised in the
sense we understand it today (many would remain in quasi-serfdom).

Thus we must have a group within this late 3rd century generation who were
experiencing money use for the first time, in a way their parents had not. 
Casually playing with this idea, it occurred to me that the reports of high
rates of saving within the current generation in China seemed at least
superficially to be similar, in some ways.

Hence my question.

It is of course possible that the 3rd century rise in savings was just to do
with a straightforward rise in incomes, in much the way I understand Keynes
to have suggested.

Alternatively, that patterns of saving in 3rd century Roman and modern China
are normal, and what we are seeing at the present time is a collapse of
saving in the West under the influence of inflation and welfare payments.

Anyhow, I remain a little puzzled that such matters have apparently not been
more prominently addressed in the literature

Rob Tye