Product Description: Longtime Brookings economist and former presidential adviser Barry Bosworth examines why saving rates in the United States have fallen so precipitously over the past quarter century, why the initial consequences were surprisingly benign, and how reduced saving will affect the future well-being of Americans...read more

Product Description: As a territory of the United States, Puerto Rico enjoys the benefits of key U.S. legal, monetary, security, and tariff systems, and its residents are U.S. citizens. In the decades following World War II, Puerto Rico emerged as one of the world's fastest-growing economies...read more

Product Description: The services industries—which include jobs ranging from flipping hamburgers to providing investment advice—can no longer be characterized, as they have in the past, as a stagnant sector marked by low productivity growth. They have emerged as one of the most dynamic and innovative segments of the U...read more

Product Description: The still chaotic states of the former Soviet Union, a growing China, and the divergent nations of Eastern Europe are striving to radically transform their economies. In their quest to become more integrated with the global economy, they are making historic changes to move toward market-based, private-enterprise systems...read more

Product Description: The Uruguay Round trade agreement, recently ratified by Congress, was the eighth in a series of negotiations under the auspices of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Like the ratification proceddings, the negotiations were both contentious and extended...read more

Product Description: Should countries in Latin America and Eastern Europe follow the Chilean approach to economic restructuring, market liberalization, and stabilization? Following years of hyperinflation and domestic turmoil, Chile undertook a series of dramatic economic reforms...read more

The emergence of large trade imbalances among the industrial countries during the 1980s - particularly the massive deficit of the United States and the surpluses of Germany and Japan - has led to growing disenchantment with the international economic system. But while many critics point to unfair trade practices as the cause of these imbalances, Barry Bosworth contends that this emphasis is misplaced. Instead, he argues, the trade disparities are not the result of external infractions, but rather a reflection of domestic failures. The United States, for example, with its large government budget deficit and low rate of private saving, must borrow abroad to finance its investment. Similarly, trade surpluses of countries such as Japan are indicative of a surplus of national saving over investment needs, rather than restrictive trade practices. Bosworth explains that the existence of large trade imbalances became possible in the 1980s because of the development of an international capital market that greatly reduced the barriers to borrowing and lending across national borders. The result is an international system in which national economies are closely linked through international capital markets as well as trade in goods and services. Bosworth uses data from the major industrial countries to highlight the process by which changes in domestic rates of saving and investment lead to changes in interest rates, exchange rates, and trade balances. He first examines the reasons for the decline in rates of national saving and investment that have been evident throughout the industrialized world. One conclusion is that large and sustained trade imbalances are likely to be a common feature of the international economy in the future. He then focuses on the role of exchange rates in the process of adjusting to trade imbalances, and considers whether the wide fluctuations in exchange rates that have occurred are a cause of concern or simply an integral part of the international adjustment ot the divergent patterns of national saving and investment.

Product Description: This study features six essays which review the available literature on the effects of NAFTA on growth, employment, income distribution, specific industries, and agriculture in the three countries, as well as the implications for the world trading system and non-NAFTA countries.

Examines the effects of rising social security costs and of measures adopted to deal with them, and discusses possible ways of coping with the shortfall of available money for the aging American population

Addresses issues of the economy and foreign policy in the United States, from reduction of the federal deficit and financing health care and social security to possible future arms control agreements and dealings with changes in China and the Soviet Union

Product Description: The Economics of Federal Credit Programs discusses government lending, government guaranty of loans, and credit control in the United States.

Product Description: This books examines economic conditions and policies in Sweden. Topics include adjusting to slower economic growth, labor markets, taxation, the public sector, and Swedish political foundations.