In this paper, we document the fact that countries that have experienced occasional financial crises have, on average, grown faster than countries with stable financial conditions. We measure the incidence of crisis with the skewness of credit growth, and find that it has a robust negative...

Credit market conditions play a key role in propagating shocks in middle income countries (MICs). In particular, shocks to the spread between domestic and international interest rates have a strong effect on GDP, and an even stronger effect on domestic credit. This strong credit channel is...

We address the question of whether growth and welfare can be higher in crisis prone economies. First, we show that there is a robust empirical link between per-capita GDP growth and negative skewness of credit growth across countries with active financial markets. That is, countries that have...

In this paper we document three credit market imperfections prevalent in middle income countries that can help explain the boom-bust cycles as well as other macroeconomic patterns observed at higher frequencies across these countries. These imperfections are: the existence of financing...