Are market-based or bank-based financial systems better at financing the expansion of industries that depend heavily on external finance, facilitating the formation of new establishments, and improving the efficiency of capital allocation across industries? We find evidence for neither the...

This paper assesses two theories regarding the historical determinants of international differences in financial development. The law and finance theory holds that legal traditions differ in terms of the priority they attach to protecting the rights of private investors vis-a-vis the State and...

This paper contributes to the literature on how a country's legal origin influences the operation of its financial system by using firm-level survey data on the obstacles that firms face in raising external finance. The paper assesses two channels through which legal origin may influence the...

This paper examines whether financial development boosts the growth of small firms more than large firms and hence provides information on the mechanisms through which financial development fosters aggregate economic growth. We define an industry's technological firm size as the firm size...

New research suggests that cross-country differences in legal origin help explain differences in financial development. This paper empirically assesses two theories of why legal origin influences financial development. First, the political' channel stresses that (i) legal traditions differ in...

By studying intrastate branch banking reform in the United States, this paper provides evidence that financial markets substantively influence the distribution of income. From the 1970s through the 1990s, most states removed restrictions on intrastate branching, which intensified bank...

Motivated by public policy debates about bank consolidation and conflicting theoretical predictions about the relationship between the market structure of the banking industry and bank fragility, this paper studies the impact of bank concentration, bank regulations, and national institutions on...

This paper explores the relationship between the relative size of the Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) sector, economic growth, and poverty alleviation using a new database on the share of SME labor in the total manufacturing labor force. Using a sample of 45 countries, we find a strong,...

While substantial research finds that financial development boosts overall economic growth, we study whether financial development disproportionately raises the incomes of the poor and alleviates poverty. Using a broad cross-country sample, we distinguish among competing theoretical predictions...

Which commercial bank supervisory policies ease - or intensify - the degree to which bank corruption is an obstacle to firms raising external finance? Based on new data from more than 2,500 firms across 37 countries, this paper provides the first empirical assessment of the impact of different...