Traditionally the creation of sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) was “supply-driven”, the result of excess reserves from natural resources (e.g. Norway, Qatar, Kuwait, etc.) or non-commodity capital flows (e.g. South Korea, China, Singapore, etc.). More recently we observe many newly established...

Political economy theories of financial development argue that in countries where a narrow elite controls political decisions, financial development may be obstructed to deny access to finance to potential competitors. We use panel data on developed and developing countries from 1975ndash;2000...