East Asian, and primarily Chinese and Japanese, excess saving has been comparatively large and controversial since the 1980s. That it has contributed to the decline in the global “natural” rate of interest is consistent with Bernanke's much debated “savings glut” hypothesis for the...

Obtaining reliable data on capital is a recurring challenge when estimating economy-wide productivity growth, especially for developing countries. In this paper I construct energy-based productivity series which use energy consumption instead of capital when making such estimates. I first show...

The author argues that the economic benefits of low gasoline prices for the U.S. economy have fallen substantially since the reemergence of America as a major oil producer. The old rule-ofthumb that a 10% fall in the oil price raises inflation-adjusted U.S. GDP by 0.2% is too large - the impact...