In recent years there has been substantial theoretical and empirical work on the role that financial markets play in fostering economic growth and development. This paper provides a selective review of the literature, as well as new empirical evidence on the relationship between financial...

There is now a substantial theoretical literature arguing that inflation impedes financial deepening. Furthermore, it has been hypothesized that the relationship is a nonlinear one, in that there is a threshold level of inflation below which inflation has a positive effect on financial depth,...

This paper examines the link between lending booms, asset price cycles, and financial crises across East Asian countries. Both theoretical arguments and empirical evidence support a strong relationship between bank lending and asset price inflation, especially in the real estate market. While...

A growth accounting exercise is conducted for 88 countries for 1960-94 to examine the source of cross-country differences in total factor productivity (TFP) levels. Two differences distinguish this analysis from that of the related literature. First, the critical technology parameter—the share...

This paper analyzes the borrowing behavior of a small open economy of a developing country that relies heavily on imports for its capital formation and faces an upward-sloping supply function of foreign loans. Decision makers face uncertainty about the longevity of external shocks. That...

This paper derives a structural import demand equation and estimates it for a large number of countries, using recent time series techniques that address the problem of nonstationarity. Because the statistical properties of the different estimators have been derived only asymptotically,...

A healthy and dynamic financial sector is essential to achieving high and sustainable economic growth in the Maghreb region-Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia. Financial integration within the Maghreb region will help deepen financial markets, increase their efficiency, and enhance...

The paper estimates export demand elasticities for a large number of developing and developed countries, using time-series techniques that account for the nonstationarity in the data. The average long-run price and income elasticities are found to be approximately -1 and 1.5, respectively. Thus,...

In recent years there has been substantial theoretical and empirical work on the role that financial markets play in fostering economic growth and development. This paper provides a selective review of the literature, as well as new empirical evidence on the relationship between financial...