Until Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy in September 2008, the conventional wisdom was that the crisis was the result of problems in the financial sector. However, after the dramatic falls in industrial production in countries such as Japan and Germany starting in the last quarter of 2008, it became...

This paper evaluates (1) whether the exogenous component of financial intermediary development influences economic growth and (2) whether cross-country differences in legal and accounting systems (e.g., creditor rights, contract enforcement, and accounting standards) explain differences in the...