This paper reviews the evolving literature that links financial development, financial crises, and economic growth in the past 20 years. The initial disconnect--with one literature focusing on the effect of financial deepening on long-run growth and another studying its impact on volatility and...

Although a large literature argues that European settlement outside of Europe shaped institutional, educational, technological, cultural, and economic outcomes, researchers have been unable to directly assess these predictions because of an absence of data on colonial European settlement. In...

"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...

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...

Does economic development depend on geographic endowments like temperate instead of tropical location, the ecological conditions shaping diseases, or an environment good for grains or certain cash crops? Or do these endowments of tropics, germs, and crops affect economic development only through...

We assess how the African slave trade--which had enduring effects on social cohesion--continues to influence financial systems. After showing that the intensity with which people were enslaved and exported from Africa during the 1400 - 1900 period helps account for overall financial development,...

This paper describes our construction of the Global Financial Development Database and uses the data to compare financial systems around the world. The database provides information on financial systems in 205 economies over the period from 1960 to 2010 and includes measures of (1) size of...

This paper examines the evolving importance of banks and securities markets during the process of economic development. We find that as countries develop economically, (1) the size of both banks and securities markets increases relative to the size of the economy, (2) the association between an...

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,...

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...