The main purposes of this paper are to review the operational modalities and experience of oil funds currently in place in Norway, Chile (copper), the State of Alaska, Venezuela, Kuwait, and Oman, and to draw some preliminary conclusions on their contribution to enhance fiscal management. The...

The main findings are as follows: (1) an increase in private national saving during 2001-03 was the key contributor to the turnaround in Pakistan''s external current account during this period; (2) while Pakistan''s growth was mainly export-led before 2003-04, it was largely led by domestic...

Heightened uncertainty since the onset of the Great Recession has materially increased saving rates, contributing to lower consumption and GDP growth. Consistent with a model of precautionary savings in the face of uncertainty, we find for a panel of advanced economies that greater labor income...

This paper highlights that real interest rates in Brazil have declined substantially over time, but are still well above the average of emerging market inflation targeting regimes. The adoption of an inflation-targeting regime and better economic fundamentals (reduction in inflation volatility...

Are generational accounts informative about the effect of the budget on the intergenerational distribution of resources and on aggregate saving? First, the usefulness of generational accounts lives or dies with the strict life-cycle model of household consumption. Second, even if the life-cycle...

We develop an overlapping generations model of a developing economy in which ‘culture’ and technology interact to determine savings, investment and growth. Investment is assumed to involve intermediation or other costs which may, in each period, result in either of two stable equilibria for...

In 2007, countries in the Euro periphery were enjoying stable growth, low deficits, and low spreads. Then the financial crisis erupted and pushed them into deep recessions, raising their deficits and debt levels. By 2010, they were facing severe debt problems. Spreads increased and,...

We study the history of terms-of-trade booms (during 1970–2012), with a focus on Latin America, through the prisms of a simple metric that quantifies the associated income windfall. We also document saving patterns during these episodes and propose a measure of how much of the income windfall...

This paper extends recent work by Feldstein and Horioka (1980) and Bayoumi (1990), and examines saving-investment correlations for industrial countries in the post-war period. The focus of the enquiry is on differences observed between EMS and non-EMS countries. It is seen that the EMS countries...

The increase in the U.S. public debt over the past twelve years raises questions about its implications for investment and economic growth. This paper places these developments within an international and historical context and quantitatively examines the implications of various measures of the...