Analysis of a panel data set for 1976-98 shows that on balance stock markets and banks positively influence economic growth; findings that do not result from biases induced by simultaneity, omitted variables, or unobserved country-specific effects

Economies with better developed financial sectors have a comparative advantage in manufacturing industries. A two-sector model shows the sector with large scale economies profiting more than the other from a well-developed financial sector. In countries with higher levels of financial...

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...

A country's level of financial development and the legal environment in which financial intermediaries and markets operate critically influence economic development. In countries whose financial sectors are more fully developed and whose legal systems protect the rights of outside investors,...

June 2000 - Do industries that depend heavily on external finance grow faster in market-based or bank-based financial systems? Are new firms more likely to form in a bank-based or a market-based financial system? Beck and Levine find no evidence for the superiority of either market-based or...

February 2000 - Some say that democracy is more likely to survive under parliamentary governments. That result is not robust to the use of different variables from the Database of Political Institutions, a large new cross-country database that may illuminate many other issues affecting and...

July 1999 - This new database of indicators of financial development and structure across countries and over time unites a range of indicators that measure the size, activity, and efficiency of financial intermediaries and markets. Beck, Demirgüç-Kunt, and Levine introduce a new database of...