A paradigm is presented where both the extent of financial intermediation and the rate of economic growth are endogenously determined. Financial intermediation promotes growth because it allows a higher rate of return to be earned on capital, and growth in turn provides the means to implement...

Growth theory offers two plausible explanations of growth. One stresses the supply of productive ideas and holds that the industrial revolution had to wait until we had thought up enough inventions to lift us into the era of modern growth. It says, roughly, that the growth of living standards...

Machines are more expensive in poor countries, and the relation is pronounced. It is hard for a Solow (1956) type of model to explain the relation between machine prices and GDP given that in most countries equipment investment is under 10% of GDP. A stronger relation emerges in a Solow (1959)...