Saving rates display great variation across countries and over time. They are also closely related to growth performance. This volume provides a state-of-the-art account of key variables, institutions and policies that determine saving. Drawing from a systematic exploration of the existing literature, the collection summarizes current knowledge about cross-country saving trends, the relation between saving and growth, the impact of financial policies and institutions on saving, the effect of foreign resource inflows on saving, and the links between income distribution and aggregate saving.

Saving rates display great variation across countries and over time. They are also closely related to growth performance. This volume provides a state-of-the-art account of key variables, institutions and policies that determine saving. Drawing from a systematic exploration of the existing literature, the collection summarizes current knowledge about cross-country saving trends, the relation between saving and growth, the impact of financial policies and institutions on saving, the effect of foreign resource inflows on saving, and the links between income distribution and aggregate saving.

Latin America's macroeconomic crises of the 1980s and '90s forced a severe fiscal adjustment across the region. More often than not, fiscal stability was achieved at the cost of a drastic compression of public infrastructure spending, accompanied by the hope that the private sector would take the leading role in infrastructure provision. This book documents the major trends in infrastructure provision in Latin America over the past two decades n order to assess the consequences of this changed public-private partnership from the perspective of economic growth, public finances, and the...

Analyzing the experience of Mexico under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the authors draw lessons for other countries considering free trade agreements with the United States. The authors conclude that NAFTA raised external trade and foreign investment inflows and had a modest effect on Mexico's average income per person. It is likely that NAFTA also helped achieve a modest reduction in poverty and an improvement in job quality. However, major obstacles remain to Mexico's long term development--NAFTA is not enough. The main lesson for other countries is that free trade...

The Schumpeterian process of 'creative destruction' is an essential ingredient of a dynamic economy. In many countries around the world, however, this process is weakened by pervasive regulation of product and factor markets. This book documents the regulatory obstacles faced by firms, particularly in developing countries, and assesses their implications for firm renewal and macroeconomic performance. Combining a variety of methodological approaches--analytical and empirical, micro and macroeconomic, single- and cross-country-- the book provides evidence that streamlining the regulatory...