This paper comments on five aspects of globalization: (1) the gains from international flows of goods and capital; (2) the role of foreign direct investment and reasons for its increase; (3) the preventions and management of currency crises; (4) the fluctuation of relative currency values; and...

The U.S. Social Security Administration, in cooperation with similar agencies in other countries, recently developed estimates of social security benefits for twelve major industrial countries. The present paper uses these data to estimate the effects of social security benefits on saving and...

More recently, Alan Greenspan and John Helliwell have shown that the link between domestic saving and domestic investment became substantially weaker after the mid-1990s. The research reported in the current paper suggests that this is true of the smaller OECD countries but not of the larger...

This is the introductory chapter to an NBER conference volume that examined the lessons to be drawn from the financial and currency crises of the late 1990s. The paper does not attempt to summarize the specific content of that meeting but provides the author's personal conclusions about crisis...

The actual value added tax systems used in many countries differ significantly from the completely general VAT that has been the focus of most economic analyses. In practice, VAT systems exempt broad classes of consumer goods and services. This has important implications for the effect of the...

How internationally mobile is the world's supply of capital? Does capital flow among industrial countries to equalize the yield to investors? Alternatively, does the saving that originates in a country remain 'to be invested there? Or does the truth lie somewhere between these two extremes? The...