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This paper presents new evidence on the behavior of saving in the world, by extending previous empirical research in several dimensions. After extensively surveying the relevant theoretical and empirical literature, the paper reports estimates of saving determinants relying on the newly constructed and largest available database covering 165 countries over 1981–2012. The empirical specification includes determinants not considered in the literature, explores differences in saving behavior nesting the 2008–10 crisis period and four different country groups, searches for commonalities across key saving aggregates (national, private, household, and corporate saving rates), and is subject to a robustness analysis based on different estimation techniques. The results confirm in part existing research, but also shed light on some ambiguous or contradictory findings and highlight the role of neglected determinants. Compared to the literature, we find a larger number of significant determinants, changes across periods and country groups, and similarities across different saving aggregates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: China’s state-owned banks have demonstrated a tremendous capacity for change, but their implications for development policy are often unclear. The paper examines why the pre-reform banking system based on moral compromise almost seamlessly changed to one based on self-advancement. Focusing on a period when resources were desperately short, the paper argues that China’s great advantage has been Hong Kong and the safe access to international markets it provided. Consequently China’s leadership is more familiar with international markets than is often assumed, and although capitalism is no longer exceptional, access to formal institutions continues to be a core development priority in achieving modernization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) program provides universal basic income (UBI) to all residents from investment earnings of a state sovereign wealth fund created from oil rents. This paper evaluates the effect of the PFD to mitigate poverty among the state’s rural Indigenous (Alaska Native) peoples: a population with historically high poverty rates living in a region with limited economic opportunities. Errors in recording PFD income in data used to calculate official poverty statistics cause them to misrepresent poverty in Alaska and understate the effect of the PFD. Estimating poverty rates with and without PFD income therefore requires reconstruction of family incomes from household-level data. Estimated poverty rates from reconstructed income show that the PFD has had a substantial, although diminishing mitigating effect on poverty for rural Indigenous families. The PFD has had a larger effect on poverty among children and elders than for the rural Alaska Native population as a whole. Alaska Native seniors, who receive additional sources of UBI derived primarily from resource rents besides the PFD, have seen a decline in poverty rates, while poverty rates for children have increased. Evidence has not appeared for commonly hypothesized potential adverse social and economic consequences of UBI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This paper discusses two well-known market-based social change initiatives, Fair Trade coffee and Forest Stewardship Council certification, which harness market forces to pursue social and environmental objectives. A serious challenge for both is to operate in the conventional market without undermining their original objectives. A global commodity chain analysis approach is combined with insights from economic sociology embeddedness theory to explore the social, cultural and organizational factors shaping the initiatives’ governance structures. Both initiatives are seen to move along opposite organizational trajectories, but face similar pressures from conventional market logics, practices and dominant actors. A preliminary framework is proposed for comparative assessment, focusing on distribution of benefits, how conventional market institutions may be questioned, and how internal governance manages diverse stakeholder interests and influence. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]