The authors assess the presence and extent of involuntary savings by comparing the predicted savings rates of market economies with those of the pre-transition economies. On balance, predicted savings rates fell short of actual savings rates, especially for the former Soviet Union and the...

Using Principal Components, the authors construct a 25-year time series index of financial liberalization for each of eight developing countries: Chile, Ghana, Indonesia, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Turkey, and Zimbabwe. They use it in an econometric analysis of private saving in...

Countries with small financial systems are generally small economies with a reduced dimension of institutional relationships, a greater concentration of wealth, and a relatively less independent civil service. These characteristics facilitate concentration of functions and, more generally, weak...

The insurance industry is relatively well developed. It makes extensive use of reinsurance facilities and is free from the pervasive premium, product, investment, and reinsurance controls that have bedeviled the insurance markets of so many developing countries around the world. Total premiums...

As governments grow richer, the share of their GDP devoted to public spending rises. Public spending in the United States was 7.5 percent of GDP in 1913. It is 33 percent today. Although industrial countries spend twice as much as developing countries, government spending on goods and services...

Like other financial institutions, private pension funds require a panoply of prudential and protective regulations to ensure their soundness and safeguard the interests of affiliated workers. These regulations include authorization criteria (such as as minimum capital,"fit and proper,"and...

The author offers an overview of issues relating to the development of funded pension schemes in industrial countries. The analysis applies the economic theory of pension regulation to experience with the structure, regulation, and performance of funds in nine countries - Canada, Denmark,...

The insurance industry is underdeveloped in many of the world's emerging markets and transition economies, sometimes because of restrictive regulations or inadequate supervision of insurance companies. Many countries are considering reforming regulation of their insurance systems and...

For both economic and regulatory reasons, most developing countries have underdeveloped pension funds and insurance sectors, and their social security systems face many financial and organizational problems. Wide-ranging reform would produce considerable economic and social benefits. A...

The authors provide a conceptual framework for designing a comprehensive risk financing strategy for a firm, using an optimal combination of three instruments: self-retention, contingent debt, and insurance. Using an original conceptual model, the risk management decisions of the firm are first...