Financial development and economic growth: a cointegration and error-correction modeling approach for south Asian countries

This paper assesses long-run causal relationship between financial development and economic growth for South Asian countries - India, Pakistan and Bangladesh for the period 1976 -2008. Financial development emanates from financial systems that encourage financial stability and foster a framework for the implementation of successful economic polices. Financial Systems can be divided into ‘bank-based'' and ‘capital-market-based'' categories. Bank-based financial systems are the close involvement of their banks with industrial firms; banks are the most important source of finance for industry. Capital-market-based financial systems are characterized by highly developed capital markets and banks. Bank-based financial systems may be in a good position to implement successfully expansionary monetary policy and industrial strategy. Financial liberalisation and repression may show a positive association between financial development and economic growth. We conduct cointegrated vector autoregressive model to assess long-run relationship between financial development and economic growth. Empirical results imply a stable relationship between financial development and economic growth for these countries. Results of error correction models indicate Granger causality between financial development and economic growth running from financial development to economic growth.