Has anybody read Martin Feldstein's essay, "Global capital Flows"? It
appeared
in the June 24th, 1995 edition of the Economist. One of the points made in
the
essay is that there is a strong relationship between national savings and
investment. For OECD countries, between 1970 and 1992, "about two-thirds of
each additional dollar of sustained saving remains at home to finance
additional domestic investment." Feldstein argues that the relationship is
robust to changes in the sample of time and of countries.
Feldstein uses this relationship to argue that capital markets are highly
segmented. Consequently, it is important that countries develop policies to
increase national savings. Mexico's recent problems are an example of
what happens when this does not occur.
Stuart M. Glosser
Dept. of Economics
University of Wisconsin at Whitewater
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(414) 472-5580
(414) 472-1361