We revisit the relationship between financial development and economic growth in a panel of 52 middle income countries over the 1980-2008 period, using pooled mean group estimator in a dynamic heterogeneous panel setting. We show that financial development does not have a linear positive...

In this paper we re-evaluate the hypothesis that the development of the financial sector was an essential factor behind economic growth in 19th century Germany. We apply a structural VAR framework to a new annual data set from 1870 to 1912 that was initially recorded by Walther Hoffmann (1965)....

This paper examines the relationship between financial development, CO2 emissions, trade and economic growth using simultaneous-equation panel data models for a panel of 12 MENA countries over the period 1990-2011. Our results indicate that there is evidence of bidirectional causality between...

Initially, voting rights were limited to wealthy elites providing political support for stock markets. The franchise expansion induces the median voter to provide political support for banking development as this new electorate has lower financial holdings and benefits less from the uncertainty...

We present a theoretical model of moral hazard and adverse selection in an imperfectly competitive loans market that is suitable for application to Africa. The model allows for variation in both the level of contract enforcement (depending on the quality of governance) and the degree of market...

This paper proposes a model where heterogeneous firms choose whether to undertake R&D or not. Innovative firms are more productive, have larger investment opportunities and lower own funds for necessary tangible continuation investments than non-innovating firms. As a result, they are...

We analyze the link between financial development and income inequality for a broad unbalanced dataset of up to 138 developed and developing countries over the years 1960 to 2008. Using credit-to-GDP as a measure of financial development, our results reject theoretical models predicting a...

How do financial development and financial integration interact? We focus on Japan’s Great Recession after 1990 to study this question. Regional differences in banking integration affected how the recession spread across the country: financing frictions for credit-dependent firms were more...

This paper studies how firm-level export performance is affected by Real Exchange Rate (RER) volatility and investigates whether this effect depends on existing financial constraints. Our empirical analysis relies on export data for more than 100,000 Chinese exporters over the 2000-2006 period....

Are natural resources a “curse” or a “blessing”? The empirical evidence suggests either outcome is possible. The paper surveys a variety of hypotheses and supporting evidence for why some countries benefit and others lose from the presence of natural resources. These include that a...