Saving in Developing Countries: An Overview

This article reviews the current state of knowledge on the determinantsof saving rates, presenting the main findings and contributionsof the recently completed World Bank research project, ‘SavingAcross the World.’ The article discusses the basic designof the research project and its core database, the World SavingDatabase. It then summarizes the main project results and placesthem in the context of the literature on saving, identifyingthe key policy and nonpolicy determinants of private savingrates. Special attention is paid to the relationship betweengrowth and saving and the impact of specific policies on savingrates. The article concludes by introducing the studies includedin this special issue.     

Household Survey Data and Pricing Policies in Developing Countries

In recent years, household survey data from developing countrieshave increasingly become available and have been increasinglyused to cast light on important questions of policy. The reformof prices, whether agricultural prices, consumer taxes, subsidies,or tariffs, has consequences for individual welfare and forgovernment revenues, and these can be investigated empiricallywith household survey data. The gainers and losers from pricechanges can be identified, and the magnitudes of their gainsand losses measured. Nonparametric estimation techniques providea straightforward and convenient way of displaying this information.The procedure is illustrated for the effects of rice pricingin Thailand using data from more than five thousand rural households.Estimates of the revenue effects of price reforms are harderto obtain, because they require estimates of supply and demandelasticities, estimates that are not easily obtained for manydeveloping countries. A procedure is presented for estimatingprice elasticities of demand from spatial price variation asrecorded in household survey data. The main innovations liein the appropriate treatment of quality variations and measurementerror. Applications of the procedure in Côte d'lvoire,Indonesia, and Morocco are reviewed.     

On the Relationship between Domestic Saving and the Current Account: Evidence and Theory for Developing Countries

We examine the relationship between domestic saving and the current account in developing countries. Our three main findings are that: (i) domestic saving has a small effect on the current account; (ii) domestic saving has a significant positive effect on the trade balance—this effect is much larger than the effect that domestic saving has on the current account; and (iii) domestic saving has a significant negative effect on net-current transfers. We use countries in the SSA region during the period 1980-2009 as a laboratory for an instrumental variables (IV) approach. The IV approach enables to obtain estimates of causal effects. Underlying the IV approach is the significant positive first-stage response of domestic saving to plausibly exogenous annual rainfall: an unanticipated, transitory supply-side shock. We construct a small open-economy DSGE model with debt adjustment costs and endogenous current transfers to match the empirical findings. The model enables to examine the relationship between domestic saving and the current account for different types of shocks. An important message of our paper is that, for developing countries, estimates of the relationship between domestic saving and domestic investment are not informative for answering the question how domestic saving affects a country's accumulation of net foreign assets.     

Household Saving in China

China, in recent years the world's largest and fastest growingeconomy, also has national saving rates that are among the highestin the world. This article considers a variety of statisticalissues that cloud the measurement of aggregate and householdsaving in China. It also provides new empirical evidence onthe importance of intertemporal considerations in explainingthe variation in household saving across China's provinces.     

Disability, Poverty, and Schooling in Developing Countries: Results from 14 Household Surveys

Analysis of 14 household surveys from 13 developing countriessuggests that 1–2 percent of the population have disabilities.Adults with disabilities typically live in poorer than averagehouseholds: disability is associated with about a 10 percentagepoint increase in the probability of falling in the two poorestquintiles. Much of the association appears to reflect lowereducational attainment among adults with disabilities. Peopleof ages 6–17 with disabilities do not live in systematicallywealthier or poorer households than other people of their age,although in all countries studied they are significantly lesslikely to start school or to be enrolled at the time of thesurvey. The order of magnitude of the school participation deficitassociated with disability—which is as high as 50 percentagepoints in 3 of the 13 countries—is often larger than deficitsrelated to other characteristics, such as gender, rural residence,or economic status differentials. The results suggest a worrisomevicious cycle of low schooling attainment and subsequent povertyamong people with disabilities in developing countries.     

The Impact of Decentralized Data Entry on the Quality of Household Survey Data in Developing Countries: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in Vietnam

Computers were provided to randomly selected districts participatingin a household survey in Vietnam to assess the impact on dataquality of entering data within a day or two of completing theinterview rather than several weeks later in the provincialcapital. Provision of computers had no significant effect onthe observed distribution of household expenditures and thusno effect on measured poverty. Provision of computers reducedthe mean number of errors per household by 5–23 percent,depending on the type of error. Given the already low rate oferrors in the survey, however, the goal of increasing the precisionof the estimated mean of a typical variable can be achievedat a much lower cost by slightly increasing the sample size.Provision of additional computers did substantially reduce thetime interviewers spent adding up and checking the data in thefield, with the value of the time saved close to the cost ofpurchasing desktop computers.     

Cross-Country Evidence on Public Sector Retrenchment

This article reports the results from a survey of public sectoremployment retrench-ment episodes across a wide variety of developingand transition economies. The information collected and analyzedis primarily from internal World Bank documents and in-depthinterviews with World Bank staff having operational informationabout experiences in specific countries. Using the informationcollected on 41 retrenchment programs across 37 countries, thearticle analyzes the relationships between the factors leadingto retrenchment, the scope and nature of retrenchment, and themethods used to accomplish the retrenchment. The discussionof methods includes an analysis of the mix of involuntary andvoluntary employment reduction programs, the compensation schemesoffered, and the extent of targeting of specific types of workers.Although relevant quantitative information is limited, the articlealso attempts to evaluate the outcome of the programs on severaldimensions. The most striking findings relate to analysis ofthe factors leading a significant fraction of programs to rehireworkers separated from the public sector (thereby defeatingthe programs'objective). In addition, the article relates programcharacteristics to calculated summary financial payback indicatorsand to the nature of the labor market adjustment.     

Private Participation in Infrastructure and Financial Sector Development: Evidence from Developing Countries

This article studies whether private participation in infrastructure (PPI) investments promote financial sector development (FSD). With data from 62 developing countries over the period 1990–2013, we provide evidence of a positive and significant relationship between PPI investments and FSD, irrespective of different control variables, estimation methods and measures of FSD. With heterogeneity tests, we illustrate that the promotion effect is larger in emerging countries than in the other countries; however, the difference is marginal. We also identify that both civil and common legal origins have a comparative advantage than socialist legal origin for FSD.     

Macroeconomic Factors in the Dynamics of Corporate and Household Saving: Evidence from Central and Eastern Europe

This article uses panel data estimations on annual data from 10 Central and Eastern European countries to assess the effect of different macroeconomic variables on the dynamics of corporate and household saving. The analyses show that changes in the macroeconomic environment affect the saving rates in both sectors, but with marked differences across the two sectors. The differences are most pronounced for the output gap, the real interest rate, the inflation rate, and the current account balance. Some variables, including the unemployment rate and changes in the real exchange rate, are unimportant in both sectors. The different results for the two sectors underscore the importance of analyzing the factors driving the dynamics of corporate and household saving separately.     

The Financial and Operating Performance of Newly Privatized Firms: Evidence from Developing Countries

This paper examines the change in the financial and operating performance of 79 companies from 21 developing countries that experienced full or partial privatization during the period from 1980 to 1992. We use accounting performance measures adjusted for market effects in addition to unadjusted accounting performance measures. Both unadjusted and market-adjusted results show significant increases in profitability, operating efficiency, capital investment spending, output, employment level, and dividends. We also find a decline in leverage following privatization but this change is significant only for unadjusted leverage ratios. Our results are generally robust when we partition our data into various subsamples.     

Urbanization in Developing Countries

The rapid urbanization in many developing countries over thepast half century seems to have been accompanied by excessivelyhigh levels of concentration of the urban population in verylarge cities. Some degree of urban concentration may be desirableinitially to reduce inter- and intraregional infrastructureexpenditures. But in a mature system of cities, economic activityis more spread out. Standardized manufacturing production tendsto be deconcentrated into smaller and medium-size metropolitanareas, whereas production in large metropolitan areas focuseson services, research and development, and nonstandardized manufacturing.The costs of excessive concentration (traffic accidents, healthcosts from exposure to high levels of air and water pollution,and time lost to long commutes) stem from the large size ofmegacities and underdeveloped institutions and human resourcesfor urban planning and management. Alleviating excessively highurban concentration requires investments in interregional transportand telecommunications to facilitate deconcentration of industry.It also requires fiscal deconcentration, so that interior citiescan raise the fiscal resources and provide the services neededto compete with primate cities for industry and population.      

Cultural Determinants of Household Saving Behavior

Relying on the epidemiological approach, we show that culture is a significant driver of household saving behavior. Second-generation immigrants from countries that put strong emphasis on thrift or wealth accumulation tend to save more in Germany. We confirm these results in data from the United Kingdom. By linking parents to their children, we show that these two cultural components affect the saving behavior of both first-generation immigrants and their children.     

Capital Structures in Developing Countries

This study uses a new data set to assess whether capital structure theory is portable across countries with different institutional structures. We analyze capital structure choices of firms in 10 developing countries, and provide evidence that these decisions are affected by the same variables as in developed countries. However, there are persistent differences across countries, indicating that specific country factors are at work. Our findings suggest that although some of the insights from modern finance theory are portable across countries, much remains to be done to understand the impact of different institutional features on capital structure choices.     

Brain Drain in Developing Countries

An original data set on international migration by educationalattainment for 1990 and 2000 is used to analyze the determinantsof brain drain from developing countries. The analysis startswith a simple decomposition of the brain drain in two multiplicativecomponents, the degree of openness of sending countries (measuredby the average emigration rate) and the schooling gap (measuredby the education level of emigrants compared with natives).Regression models are used to identify the determinants of thesecomponents and explain cross-country differences in the migrationof skilled workers. Unsurprisingly, the brain drain is strongin small countries that are close to major Organisation forEconomic Co-operation and Development (OECD) regions, that sharecolonial links with OECD countries, and that send most of theirmigrants to countries with quality-selective immigration programs.Interestingly, the brain drain increases with political instabilityand the degree of fractionalization at origin and decreaseswith natives' human capital.     

Fiscal Policy,Business Cycles and Economic Stabilisation: Evidence from Industrialised and Developing Countries*

This paper empirically investigates the responsiveness of fiscal policy to business cycles and the effectiveness of fiscal policy in reducing economic fluctuations. From regressions on the responsiveness of fiscal policy to business cycles, we find that the government's current expenditures and subsidies & transfers move counter‐cyclically, whereas taxes and capital expenditures move pro‐cyclically. Using economic fluctuations in neighbouring countries as an instrumental variable, we show that ordinary least squares (OLS) estimates understate the responsiveness of fiscal policy to economic fluctuations. We also find that fiscal policy responds asymmetrically over economic fluctuations. In investigating the effectiveness of fiscal policy in reducing economic fluctuations, we mitigate omitted variable bias by adding four important factors ‐ military expenditures, oil production, economic fluctuations in neighbouring countries and fiscal policy responsiveness to business cycles. The results of effectiveness regressions are consistent with the responsiveness regressions, highlighting the importance of current expenditures, especially subsidies and transfers, in responding to business cycles and stabilising the economy.     

中国居民高储蓄现象的实证研究——基于分位数回归分析

本文利用1978-2008年中国宏观经济数据,通过分位数回归的方法,从消费者预期效用最大化模型出发,分析不确定性与流动性约束在中国居民消费储蓄决策中所起的作用。通过选取不同分位点进行实证研究,证明城乡居民不同消费群体的消费行为均受到了不确定性与流动性约束的影响,但影响的程度不尽相同。在此基础上,本文提出增加居民收入、改善消费者环境和完善保障体系等若干政策建议。     

Macroeconomic Fluctuations in Developing Countries: Some Stylized Facts

This article documents the main stylized features of macroeconomicfluctuations for 12 developing countries. It presents cross-correlationsbetween domestic industrial output and a large group of macroeconomicvariables, including fiscal variables, wages, inflation, money,credit, trade, and exchange rates. Also analyzed are the effectsof economic conditions in industrial countries on output fluctuationsin the sample developing countries. The results point to manysimilarities between macroeconomic fluctuations in developingand industrial countries (procyclical real wages, countercyclicalvariation in government expenditures) and some important differences(countercyclical variation in the velocity of monetary aggregates).Their robustness is examined using different detrending procedures.