This paper addresses two issues encountered in the empirical financial distress literature: a-theoretical treatment of leverage and product-market competition as predictors of financial distress hazard; and lack of attention to frailty as a potential source of bias in reported estimates. We...

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...

In this paper we empirically explore how characteristics of the domestic financial system in uence the international allocation of consumption risk using a sample of OECD countries. Our results show that the extent of risk sharing achieved does not depend on the overall development of the...

In this paper we empirically explore how characteristics of the domestic financial system influence the international allocation of consumption risk using a sample of OECD countries. Our results show that the extent of risk sharing achieved does not depend on the overall development of the...

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...

In this paper we re-evaluate the hypothesis that the development of the financial sector was an essential factor behind economic growth in 19th century Germany. We apply a structural VAR framework to a new annual data set from 1870 to 1912 that was initially recorded by Walther Hoffmann (1965)....

This paper estimates the impact of financial development on industry-level total factor productivity (TFP) growth using a largely unexploited panel of 77 countries with data for 26 manufacturing industries for the years 1963 to 2003. A significant relationship is found between financial...

We investigate how the relative contribution of external factors to stock price movements varies with the degree of financial development. We find that financial development makes stock markets more susceptible to external influences (both financial and macroeconomic). Interestingly, this effect...

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...