CAPITAL MARKET, FREQUENCY OF RECESSION, AND FRACTION OF TIME THE ECONOMY IN RECESSION

This paper investigates the relationships of capital markets, frequency of recession, and fraction of time the economy is in recession. The main finding is that frequency of recession is not robustly linked to measures of capital market development. However, the fraction of time the economy spends in recession is significantly related to capital market development, though the marginal effect is small. This implies that countries with more advanced capital markets would tend to spend lower proportion of time in recession. Results are generated using quarterly data of thirty-five countries from 1975 to 2004.