Late 19th century investors demanded compensation to invest in countries with poor institutional protection of property rights. Using the monthly stock returns of 1,808 firms located in 43 countries but traded in London between 1866 and 1907, we estimate the country-specific cost of capital. We...

This paper analyzes detailed differences in patterns of financial development across the major Asian economies, including three of the region's largest economies (China, Japan and South Korea), to understand how these differences might affect possibilities for greater regional financial...

This paper surveys the theoretical and empirical literature on the role of state-owned banks and also presents some new results and a robustness analysis. The paper shows that state-owned banks located in developing countries have fiscal costs because they are characterized by lower returns than...

This paper theoretically studies the role of the financial system in promoting macroeconomic stability and growth. It also explains endogenously the development of the financial system as part of the growth process. The productive sector engages in R\&D activities, and finances its activities...

Relying on a rich panel regression framework, we study the role of different "fundamental" credit determinants in Central, Eastern and Southeastern European (CESEE) EU Member States and compare actual private sector credit-to-GDP ratios to the derived fundamental levels. It turns out that...

This paper reviews the East Asian experience with financial integration, how economies in the region have responded to shocks, and what they may do to continue to thrive in the future. It discusses openness to capital flows as a key aspect of financial integration, briefly considering the...

How do financial development and financial integration interact? We focus on Japan's Great Recession after 1990 to study this question. Regional differences in banking integration affected how the recession spread across the country: financing frictions for credit-dependent firms were more...

This paper proposes a reassessment of the old-age debate on universal banking and growth by putting it on a different plan. Modern financial economics are used to provide new theoretical foundations to Gerschenkron's (1962) hypothesis: universality is interpreted as a strategy for banks to reach...

We exploit the natural experiment of Japan's opening to international trade to examine how comparative advantage can shape a country's long-run path towards financial development. In the late 19th century, many of Japan's prefectures had a natural comparative advantage in silk reeling. Producing...

We develop a new method for deriving minimal state variable (MSV) equilibria of a general class of Markov-switching rational expectations models and a new algorithm for computing these equilibria. We compare our approach to previously known algorithms, and we demonstrate that ours is both...