Introduction: the art of engineering prosperity in unlikely places -- The tyranny of litanies -- Unpleasant truths about institutional and financial development -- The economics of chance: policy prescriptions as laundry lists -- The mechanics of failure and the secrets of success -- Ambitious...

This Element proposes an alternative framework for rethinking the role of finance in serving the real economy from the perspective of New Structural Financial Economics. It challenges the conventional wisdom that developing countries should take the financial structure of developed countries as...