We develop a model of endogenous lobby formation in which wealth inequalityand political accountability undermine entry and financial development. In-cumbents seek a low level of effective investor protection to prevent potentialentrants from raising capital. They succeed because they can...

We observe less efficient capital allocation in countries whose banking systems are more thoroughly controlled by tycoons or families. The magnitude of this effect is similar to that of state control over banking. Unlike state control, tycoon or family control also correlates with slower...

This paper builds a dataset on bank ownership that covers more than 6,500 banks in 181 countries (59 low-income economies, 72 middle-income economies, and 50 high-income economies) over 1995-2020. I show that until 2010, there was a reduction in state-ownership of banks and an increase foreign...

A growing body of post-global financial crisis (2007-2008) literature documents several undesirable effects of enlarged financial sectors. One of these effects is the 'growth cost' of excessive finance, which reports that the finance-growth relationship is non-monotonic, and that a credit...

Joseph A. Schumpeter is one of the most famous economists of the 20th century and the ’patron saint’ of the finance and growth literature. We have discovered that the prevailing literature has, however, misinterpreted Schumpeter, which leads to puzzling empirical results and difficulties in...

In the last dozen years, economists have produced a considerable body of research suggesting that the historical origin of a country’s laws is highly correlated with a broad range of its legal rules and regulations, as well as with economic outcomes. Much of this research has dealt with rules...

Noting that "one size does not fit all" in the case of the finance-growth (FG) nexus, a growing body of literature has recently focused on uncovering economic conditions under which financial development could be beneficial (detrimental) to economic development. We look into these conditions by...

In an approach analogous to Rajan and Zingales (1998), we examine how the ability to access long-term debt affects firm-level growth volatility. We find that firms in industries with stronger preference to use long-term finance relative to short-term finance experience lower growth volatility in...

This paper presents an integrated overview of the literature linking institutions, financial development and economic growth. From the large body of research on institutional development, the paper first selects those contributions that make it possible to study the role of institutional...