East Asia and Latin America have diverged in several dimensions in the past three decades. This paper compares household saving behavior in two countries in each region (Mexico, Peru, Thailand and Taiwan). We make four contributions. First, we provide the first comparisons of savings in these...

In this paper, we review the theoretical and empirical literature on capital flight. First, we discuss the measurement of capital flight. Next, we provide information on the magnitude as well as the ‘burden’ of capital flight for a selected set of developing countries in four regions of the...

Data on the growth performances of countries with similar comparative (dis)advantage and political institutions reveal a striking variation across world regions. While some former autocracies such as the East Asian growth miracles have done remarkably well, others such as the Latin American...

People's Republic of China (PRC) in recent years has emerged as the largest recipient of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the world. Many analysts and government officials in the developing world have increasingly expressed concerns that they are losing competitiveness to PRC. Is PRC diverting...

This paper compares the experience of growth performance and macroeconomic adjustment between East Asia and Latin America from 1970 to 2000. We find that the difference in growth performance between the two regions can be largely attributed to the differences in fundamental growth factors such...

In recent years, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has emerged as the world’s largest recipient of foreign direct investment (FDI). Many analysts and government officials in the developing world have expressed concern that they are losing competitiveness to the PRC. Is the PRC diverting...

The paper analyses the performance of emerging equity markets since 1985 in the light of the Asia crisis. Contrary to the high hopes of many investors, emerging markets have severely under-performed as an asset class over the whole period, (es-pecially since 1994), lagging well behind the US and...

Many economists believe that the nature of exchange rate management was an important reason for rapid economic growth in East Asia. In this view, Asian countries avoided extreme exchange rate appreciations and kept their nominal exchange rates close to market clearing levels. In contrast, the...