What Do We Know about Investment and Saving in Latin America and the Caribbean?

This paper examines saving and investment in LAC. The first section briefly reviews the literature on the relationship between saving and investment and the impact of investment on growth. The second section examines investment in LAC. The third section describes both foreign and national saving. The fourth section tries to identify the direction of causality between saving and investment in the region and takes on the question of whether national saving should be stimulated in order to generate more investment. The last section summarizes what LAC needs to do to spur growth.