This paper provides cross-country evidence that variations in bank regulatory policies result in differences in income distribution. In particular, the overall liberalization of banking systems decreases the Gini coefficient and the Theil index significantly. However, this effect fades away for...

A sweeping and protracted reform of corporate law took place in Finland in the 1970s. The reform brought significant improvements to investor protection and, similar to the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act, tightened disclosure rules at the cost of increasing the work load in corporate reporting. We find...

We study the effects of investor protection on the availability of external finance, entrepreneurship, and creation of new firms in an equilibrium search model of private capital markets. In addition to search frictions, we examine contract frictions, specifically interim and ex post moral...

According to recent law and finance research, legislation is essential to financial development. More effi-cient financial markets would be achieved by reforming the laws governing investor protection and cor-porate governance systems. The Companies Act has traditionally played a very important...

In this paper we study how the introduction of the euro has affected corporate financing in Europe. We use firm-level data from eleven euro area countries as well as from a control group of five other European countries spanning the years 1991–2006. We show that firms from euro area countries...

This paper models the effects of financial development on economic growth through better or more efficient utilization of technological innovations. The model is based on the endogenous growth theory of Aghion and Howitt and its derivatives, especially the growth model of Aghion, Howitt and...

This paper examines the fundamental relationship between retail payments and overall economic growth. Using data from across 27 European markets over the period 1995–2009, the results confirm that migration to efficient electronic retail payments stimulates overall economic growth, consumption...

We seek to contribute to both the finance-growth literature and the community banking literature by testing the effects of the relative health of community banks on economic growth and investigating potential transmission mechanisms for these effects using data from 1993–2000 on 49 nations....

This paper discusses the effects of small banks on economic growth. We first theoretically show that small banks operating at a regional level can spur local economic growth. As compared with big interregional banks, small regional banks are more effective in promoting local economic growth,...

In this study, we test whether regional growth in 11 European countries depends on financial development and suggest the use of cost- and profit-efficiency estimates as quality measures for financial institutions. Contrary to the usual quantitative proxies for financial development, the quality...