This paper examines empirically the link between real-exchange-rate uncertainty and private investment in developing countries, using a large cross-country time series data set. The paper builds a GARCH-based measure of real-exchange-rate volatility and finds that it has a strong negative effect on investment, after controlling for other standard investment determinants and taking into account their potential endogeneity. The effect of uncertainty is not uniform, however. There is some evidence of threshold effects, so that uncertainty only matters when it exceeds some critical level. In addition, the negative effect of real-exchange-rate uncertainty on investment is significantly larger in economies that are highly open and in those with less developed financial systems.

While fiscal adjustment is commonly viewed as the cornerstone of macroeconomic stabilization, the effectiveness of alternative fiscal instruments in raising national saving is still poorly understood. This paper enters the debate by estimating a private consumption function that allows for two types of agents—finite horizons and liquidity constraints—and nests three different consumption hypotheses. Using a large-panel data set that includes both industrial and developing countries, we reject full Ricardian equivalence. We also find substantial differences between industrial and developing countries, regarding both the extent of Ricardian offsetting and the degree to which the government budget constraint is internalized.