There is a large body of literature stressing the importance of developing financial markets, including stock markets, to enhance countries' growth. I argue that the relationship between stock markets and growth is exaggerated and that the simple act of opening a formal stock market is not a...

We study the nexus between endogenous growth and asset prices. We show that endogenous growth models with either horizontal and vertical innovation match financial data well due to countercyclical dividends which are either procyclical or acyclical in US data. Countercyclical dividends...