Saving rates display considerable variation across countries and over time. This paper investigates empirically the policy and non-policy factors behind these saving disparities using a large, cross-country, time-series data set and following an encompassing approach including a number of...

We show that the welfare of a country's infinitely-lived representative consumer is summarized, to a first order, by total factor productivity and by the capital stock per capita. These variables suffice to calculate welfare changes within a country, as well as welfare differences across...