A competitive stock market is embedded into a neoclassical growth economy to analyze the interplay between the acquisition of information about firms, its partial revelation through stock prices, capital allocation and income. The stock market allows investors to share their costly private...

We develop a model of endogenous lobby formation in which wealth inequality and political accountability undermine entry and financial development. Incumbents seek a low level of effective investor protection to prevent potential entrants from raising capital. They succeed because they can...

We use portfolio theory to quantify the efficiency of state-level sectoral patterns of production in the United States. On the basis of observed growth in sectoral value-added output, we calculate for each state the efficient frontier for investments in the real economy. We study how rapidly...

This paper investigates whether privatization in emerging economies has a significant indirect effect on local stock market development through the resolution of political risk. We argue that a sustained privatization program represents a major political test which gradually resolves uncertainty...

We examine stock returns in a cross section of emerging and mature markets (47countries) between 1980-99. The level of financial development turns out to be an important determinant of the performance of stock returns. In general, a deeper and higher quality banking system decreases the...

This paper develops a theory of international trade in which financial development and factor endowment jointly determine comparative advantage. We apply the financial contract model of Holmstrom and Tirole to the Heckscher-Ohlin-Samuelson (HOS) framework. A key result is what we call the law of...

We study the effects of differences in local financial development within an integrated financial market. To do so, we construct a new indicator of financial development by estimating a regional effect on the probability that, ceteris paribus, a household is shut off from the credit market. By...

This paper exploits arbitrage conditions for bills of exchange with different maturities to provide new evidence on commercial interest rates in Amsterdam, London, and Paris during the 18th century. The lesson that emerges is that commercial interest rates were very low in all three centers and...

This paper proposes a simple model to study the relationship between domestic institutions - financial system, corporate governance, and property rights protection - and patterns of international capital flows. It studies conditions under which financial globalization can be a substitute for...

We investigate how the relative contribution of external factors to stock price movements varies with the degree of financial development. We find that financial development makes stock markets more susceptible to external influences (both financial and macroeconomic). Interestingly, this effect...