This paper studies the relationship between investor protection, entrepreneurial risk taking and income inequality. In the presence of market frictions, better protection makes investors more willing to take on entrepreneurial risk when lending to firms, thereby improving the degree of risk...

This paper studies the relationship between investor protection and income inequality. In the presence of market frictions, better protection makes investors more willing to take on entrepreneurial risk when lending to firms, thereby improving the degree of risk sharing between financiers and...

Based on the economic theory of the family, this paper constructs a model of remittances where the migrant, besides sending money to his family, also invests in his home country. The investment is looked after by a family member in return for some monetary compensation. The model focuses on two...

In the last dozen years, economists have produced a considerable body of research suggesting that the historical origin of a country’s laws is highly correlated with a broad range of its legal rules and regulations, as well as with economic outcomes. Much of this research has dealt with rules...

Based on 412 control transactions between 1990 and 2000 we construct a measure of the private benefits of control in 39 countries. We find that the value of control ranges between –4% and +65%, with an average of 14%. As predicted by theory, in countries where private benefits of control are...

We show that the development of the financial sector does not change monotonically over time. In particular, we find that by most measures, countries were more financially developed in 1913 than in 1980 and only recently have they surpassed their 1913 levels. This pattern is inconsistent with...

The paper recounts the history of the finance-growth nexus research from its origins to the yearly 1990s. The contributions are analyzed in connection with the socioeconomic context and advances in economic theory. Many ideas first expressed decades ago are still subject to constant discussions...

Since 1978, Taiwan has implemented a series of financial liberalization-related policies, including exchange rate liberalization, interest rate liberalization, and financial and foreign exchange market liberalization. The question of whether there exists a causal relationship between financial...

We explore heterogeneity in the finance-growth relationship by considering the effects of foreign and domestic lending separately. Estimating finite mixture models, we find that the effects of bank finance and foreign bank involvement on growth depend on 1) how well-developed the banking sector...