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Journal of Financial Economics Vol. 58 No. 1-2 2000

Finance and the sources of growth

Thorsten Beck1; Ross Levine2; Norman Loayza3,1

1 World Bank · 2 University of Minnesota · 3 Banco Central de Chile

Abstract

This paper evaluates the empirical relation between the level of financial intermediary development and (i) economic growth, (ii) total factor productivity growth, (iii) physical capital accumulation, and (iv) private savings rates. We use (a) a pure cross-country instrumental variable estimator to extract the exogenous component of financial intermediary development, and (b) a new panel technique that controls for biases associated with simultaneity and unobserved country-specific effects. After controlling for these potential biases, we find that (1) financial intermediaries exert a large, positive impact on total factor productivity growth, which feeds through to overall GDP growth and (2) the long-run links between financial intermediary development and both physical capital growth and private savings rates are tenuous.

DOI
10.1016/s0304-405x(00)00072-6
Volume
58
Issue
1-2
Pages
261-300
Language
en
Sources
crossref bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex

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