Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
March 2000 - Saving rates vary considerably across countries and over time. Policies that spur development are an indirect but effective way to raise private saving rates - which rise with the level and growth rate of real per capita income. Loayza, Schmidt-Hebbel, and Servén investigate the policy and nonpolicy factors behind saving disparities, using a large panel data set and an encompassing approach including several relevant determinants of private saving. They extend the literature in several dimensions by: · Using the largest data set on aggregate saving assembled to date. · Using panel instrumental variable techniques to correct for endogeneity and heterogeneity. · Performing robustness checks on changes in estimation procedures, data samples, and model specification. Their main empirical findings: · Private saving rates show considerable inertia (are highly serially correlated even after controlling for other relevant factors).
Loayza et al. (Wed,) studied this question.