While fiscal adjustment is commonly viewed as the cornerstone of macroeconomic stabilization, the effectiveness of alternative fiscal instruments in raising national saving is still poorly understood. This paper enters the debate by estimating a private consumption function that allows for two...

Saving rates display considerable variation across countries and over time. This paper investigates empirically the policy and nonpolicy factors behind these saving disparities using a large, cross-country, time-series data set and following an encompassing approach including a number of...

This paper examines empirically the link between real-exchange-rate uncertainty and private investment in developing countries, using a large cross-country time series data set. The paper builds a GARCH-based measure of real-exchange-rate volatility and finds that it has a strong negative effect...

The magnitude and the direction of net international capital flows do not fit neoclassical models. The fifty U.S. states comprise an integrated capital market with very low barriers to capital flows, which makes them an ideal testing ground for neoclassical models. We develop a simple...

We examine the empirical role of different explanations for the lack of capital flows from rich to poor countries-the "Lucas Paradox." The theoretical explanations include cross-country differences in fundamentals affecting productivity, and capital market imperfections. We show that during...