TY  - JOUR
AU  - Lane,Philip R.
AU  - Tornell,Aaron
TI  - Why Aren't Savings Rates in Latin America Procyclical?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 6502
PY  - 1998
Y2  - April 1998
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6502
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6502.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Philip Lane
The Sutherland Centre
Arts Block
Trinity College Dublin
Dublin 2  IRELAND
E-Mail: plane@tcd.ie

Aaron Tornell
Department of Economics
UCLA
405 Hilgard Ave, Bunche Hall #8283
Los Angeles, CA  90095-1477
Tel: 310/794-1686
Fax: 310/825-9528
E-Mail: tornell@econ.ucla.edu
AB  - We document a striking empirical regularity: Latin American savings rates are as a rule substantially less procyclical than for OECD countries and in some cases are actually countercyclical.  We build a non-representative agent intertemporal macroeconomic model that rationalizes this phenomenon as the equilibrium outcome of interaction between multiple groups that have common access to aggregate income.  We conclude by suggesting that institutional reform may hold the key to improving the cyclical behavior of savings in Latin America.
ER  -