A country's legal origin—whether British, French, German, or Scandinavian—helps explain the development of its financial institutions today. Legal systems differ in their ability to facilitate private exchanges and to adapt to support new financial and commercial transactions. A country...

"What role does the business environment play in promoting and restraining firm growth? Recent literature points to a number of factors as obstacles to growth. Inefficient functioning of financial markets, inadequate security and enforcement of property rights, poor provision of infrastructure,...

How the relative development of a country's stock market and banking system affects firms' growth is closely tied to how well developed the country's contracting environment is. How differences in the contracting environment affect the relative development of the stock market or banking system...