CD-ROM contains: World Bank data.

Do well-functioning stock markets and banks promote long-term economic growth? Yes, but stock markets and banks differ in the financial services they provide. Using data on 49 countries from 1976 to 1993, the authors investigate whether measures of stock market liquidity, size, volatility, and integration in world capital markets predict future rates of economic growth, capital accumulation, productivity improvements, and private savings. They find that stock market liquidity-as measured by stock trading relative to the size of the market and economy - is positively and significantly correlated with current and future rates of economic growth, capital accumulation, productivity growth, even after controlling for economic and political factors. Stock market size, volatility, and integration are not robustly linked with growth. Nor are financial indicators closely associated with private savings rates. Significantly, banking development - as measured by bank loans to private enterprises divided by GDP - when combined with stock market liquidity predicts future rates of growth, capital accumulation, and productivity growth when entered together in regressions. The authors determine that these results are consistent with views that (1)financial markets and institutions provide important services for long-run growth, and (2)stock markets and banks provide different financial services. This paper - a product of the Finance and Private Sector Development Division, Policy Research Department - is part of a larger effort in the department to understand the links between the financial system and economic growth. The study was funded by the Bank's Research Support Budget under the research project "Stock Market Development and Financial Intermediary Growth" (RPO 679-53).

"This paper reviews, appraises, and critiques theoretical and empirical research on the connections between the operation of the financial system and economic growth. While subject to ample qualifications and countervailing views, the preponderance of evidence suggests that both financial intermediaries and markets matter for growth and that reverse causality alone is not driving this relationship. Furthermore, theory and evidence imply that better developed financial systems ease external financing constraints facing firms, which illuminates one mechanism through which financial development influences economic growth. The paper highlights many areas needing additional research"--NBER website

This book provides insights into the evolving debate regarding the mobilization of domestic resources and the crucial role that financial development can and should play in this regard, exploring aspects of the financial development–domestic resource mobilization nexus, including country case studies.

Stock markets, banks and economic growth: a reasonable extreme bounds analysis (Discussion paper, 99/4)

We study the effects of a bank's engagement in trading. Traditional banking is relationship-based: not scalable, long-term oriented, with high implicit capital, and low risk (thanks to the law of large numbers). Trading is transactions-based: scalable, shortterm, capital constrained, and with the ability to generate risk from concentrated positions. When a bank engages in trading, it can use its ‘spare’ capital to profitablity expand the scale of trading. However, there are two inefficiencies. A bank may allocate too much capital to trading ex-post, compromising the incentives to build relationships ex-ante. And a bank may use trading for risk-shifting. Financial development augments the scalability of trading, which initially benefits conglomeration, but beyond some point inefficiencies dominate. The deepending of the financial markets in recent decades leads trading in banks to become increasingly risky, so that problems in managing and regulating trading in banks will persist for the foreseeable future. The analysis has implications for capital regulation, subsidiarization, and scope and scale restrictions in banking.