1,721,882 research outputs found
Finance, inequality, and poverty: cross-country evidence
Full text linkWhile substantial research finds that financial development boosts overall economic growth, the authors study whether financial development is pro-poor: Does financial development disproportionately raise the income of the poor? Using a broad cross-country sample, the authors find that the answer is yes: Financial intermediary development reduces income inequality by disproportionately boosting the income of the poor and therefore reduces poverty. This result is robust to controlling for simultaneity bias and reverse causation.Health Economics&Finance,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Economic Conditions and Volatility,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Inequality,Economic Theory&Research,Achieving Shared Growth,Health Economics&Finance,Governance Indicators
Financial structures and economic development
Full text linkThe author constructs a model that captures the two-way nature of the relationship between financial and economic development - and allows societies at different levels of economic development and with different policies to choose different financial services. In this model, various types of financial contracts and institutions arise in response to the economic environment. Incentives for financial structures to emerge are generated by liquidity and productivity risk, the costs of gathering information and mobilizing resources, and the costs of financial transactions. The emergence and development of financial arrangements in response to the economic environment can alter investment decisions and per capita growth rates - while the level of per capita income helps determine the types of financial services a particular society chooses to develop and use. The author not only reconciles more empirical regularities than past theoretical studies have done, but highlights the role of public policies on financial activities. Policy has important implications for the rate of economic growth, the level of financial development, and the types of institutions providing financial services. The model also predicts that per capita growth rates should be related to the types of financial services provided by the financial sector. Thus, the most common empirical measure of financial development may not appropriately capture fundamental features of financial development.Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Financial Intermediation,Governance Indicators
Finance and growth : Schumpeter might be right
Full text linkJoseph Schumpeter argued in 1911 that the services provided by financial intermediaries - mobilizing savings, evaluating projects, managing risk, monitoring managers, and facilitating transactions -stimulate technological innovation and economic development. The authors present evidence that supports this view. Examining a cross-section of about 80 countries for the period 1960-89, they find that various measures of financial development are strongly associated with both current and later rates of economic growth. Each measure has shortcomings but all tell the same story: finance matters. They present three main findings, which are robust to many specification tests: The average level of financial development for 1960-89 is very strongly associated with growth for the period. Financial development precedes growth. For example, financial depth in 1960 (the ratio of broad money to GDP) is positively and significantly related to real per capita GDP growth over the next 30 years even after controlling for a variety of country-specific characteristics and policy indicators. Financial development is positively associated with both investment rate and the efficiency with which economies use capital. Much work remains to be done, but the data are consistent with Schumpeter's view that the services provided by financial intermediaries stimulate long-run growth.Achieving Shared Growth,Governance Indicators,Economic Theory&Research,Inequality,Economic Growth
Reforming finance in transitional socialist economies : avoiding the path from shell money to shell games
Full text linkIn the late 1980s, transitional socialist economies (TSEs) in Central and Eastern Europe were only somewhat more sophisticated than shell money systems: savings books or currency had to be used for most transactions and there was no risk assessment, information monitoring and acquisition, or portfolio management. The TSEs have moved toward a two-tiered banking system but they lag in the development of competitive, market-based financial systems. In several TSEs the financial system seems to be part of a shell game to hide the losses of the real economy. The authors argue that rapid, successful economic reform requires putting the shell game to an end. They review several contentious issues of financial reform in the TSEs, especially issues involving macrofinance, corporate finance, the internal debt problems, and the need to build efficient banks. The authors contend that the banks should be"cleaned up"when they are privatized, to prevent the quick reemergence of debt problems. They believe that either of the proposed alternatives for shaping financial systems in the TSEs - very highly capitalized banking or narrow banking - would minimize the need for future support. Either alternative would reduce leverage in the TSEs and provide more financial stability. But taking concerns about moral hazard to an extreme - prohibiting debt finance - could starve new firms for credit and limit economic growth.Economic Theory&Research,Financial Crisis Management&Restructuring,Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Financial Intermediation
Stock market development and long-run growth
Full text linkThe authors empirically evaluate the relationship between stock market development and long-term growth. The data suggest that stock market development is positively associated with economic growth. Moreover, instrumental variables procedures indicate a strong connection between the predetermined component in the long run. While cross-country regressions imply a strong link between stock market development and economic growth, the results should be viewed as suggestive partial correlations that stimulate additional research rather than as conclusive findings. Careful case studies might help identify causal relationships and further research could bedone on the time-series property of such relationships.Economic Theory&Research,Financial Intermediation,Health Economics&Finance,Environmental Economics&Policies,Labor Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Financial Intermediation,Achieving Shared Growth,Governance Indicators,Health Economics&Finance
Financial intermediation and growth : Causality and causes
Full text linkThe authors evaluate: a) whether the level of development of financial intermediaries exerts a casual influence on economic growth; and b) whether cross-country differences in legal and accounting systems (such as creditor rights, contract enforcement, and accounting standards) explain differences in the level of financial development. Using both traditional cross-section, instrumental-variable procedures and recent dynamic panel techniques, they find that development of financial intermediaries exerts a large causal impact on growth. The data also show that cross-country differences in legal and accounting systems help determine differences in financial development. Together, these findings suggest that legal and accounting reform that strengthens creditor rights, contract enforcement, and accounting practices boosts financial development and accelerates economic growth.Financial Intermediation,Decentralization,Economic Theory&Research,Public Health Promotion,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Financial Intermediation,Financial Economics,Achieving Shared Growth,Economic Theory&Research,Governance Indicators
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Stock market development and financial intermediaries : stylized facts
Full text linkWorld stock markets are booming. Between 1982 and 1993, stock market capitalization grew from 10 trillion, an average 15 percent a year. A disproportionate amount of this growth was in emerging stock markets, which rose from 3 percent of world stock markets capitalization to 14 percent in the same period. Yet there is little empirical evidence about how important stock markets are to long-term economic development. Economists have neither a common concept nor a common measure of stock market development, so we know little about how stock market development affects the rest of the financial system or how corporations finance themselves. The authors collected and compared many different indicators of stock market development using data on 41 countries from 1986 to 1993. Each indicator has statistical and conceptual shortcomings, so they used different measures of stock market size, liquidity, concentration, and volatility, of institutional development, and of international integration. Their goal: to summarize infromation about a variety of indicators for stock market development, in order to facilitate research into the links between stock markets, economic development, and corporate financing decisions. They highlight certain important correlations: (i) In the 41 countries they studied, there are enormous cross-country differences in the level of stock market development for each indicator. The ratio of market capitalization to the gross domestic product (GDP), for example, is greater than 1 in five countries and less than 0.10 in five others. (ii) There are intuitively appealing correlations among indicators. For example, big markets tend to be less volatile, more liquid, and less concentrated in a few stocks. Internationally integrated markets tend to be less volatile. And institutionally developed markets tend to be large and liquid. (iii) The three most developed markets are in Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The most underdeveloped markets are in Colombia, Nigeria, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe. Malaysia, the Republic of Korea, and Switzerland seem to have highly developed stock market, whereas Argentina, Greece, Pakistan and Turkey have underdeveloped in richer countries, but many markets commonly labeled"emerging"(for example, in Korea, Malaysia,and Thailand) are systematically more developed than markets commonly labeled"developed"(for example, in Australia, Canada, and many European countries). (iv) Between 1986 and 1993, some markets developed rapidly in size, liquidity, and international integration. Indonesia, Portugal, Turkey, and Venezuela experienced explosive development, for example. Case studies on the reasons for (and economic consequences of) this rapid development could yield valuable insights. (v) The level of stock market development is highly correlated with the development of banks, nonbank financial institutions (finance companies, mutual funds, brokerage houses), insurance companies, and private pension funds.Markets and Market Access,Economic Theory&Research,Health Economics&Finance,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Banks&Banking Reform,Economic Theory&Research,Health Economics&Finance,Access to Markets,Markets and Market Access,Banks&Banking Reform
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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