China's rapid economic growth and success in poverty reduction over the last three decades have inspired world-wide admiration. This paper analyzes structural developments in the Chinese economy and distributional consequences thereof with the help of simple identities and behavioral...

This paper illustrates that cross-country generalizations about the impact of remittances on economic security are useful only up to a certain point; beyond that their effect can be influenced by the interplay of various factors relating to the motivations and characteristics of migrants,...

This paper examines the macroeconomic implications of life-cycle and dynastic saving behavior for closed and small, open economies. Using an extended version of Blanchard’s overlapping agents model, the analytical framework nests these two competing views, treating agents as either dynastic...

Following the 1994 financial crisis the rate of saving of the Mexican economy fell from 21.7% to 19.8% of GDP. The decline was associated with a reduction in the rate of external saving from 6.9% to 0.5% between 1994 and 1995. The overall reduction was not more dramatic because it was almost...

Prices in Russia have been decontrolled in several steps since early 1991, after decades of near-fixity. Their behavior before and after the January 1992 price liberalization is analyzed here, as are the associated movements of wages and overall consumer incomes and expenditures. The emphasis is...

There is scattered evidence suggesting a positive impact of international remittances on economic insecurity, at both a macroeconomic and household levels. However, there has not to date been a comprehensive and systematic analysis of this issue that takes into account the various complexities...