Using a database from post-communist, pre-deposit-insurance Russia, we demonstrate the presence of quantity-based sanctioning of weaker banks by both firms and households, particularly after the financial crisis of 1998. Evidence for the standard form of price discipline, however, is notably weak. Estimating the deposit supply function, we show that, particularly for poorly capitalized banks, i...

The paper extends the literature on financial development, inflation, and growth by using the idea that both the rates of return on physical and human capital affect growth. This leads to the introduction of the investment rate into the model, as a proxy for the return to physical capital, along with the inflation rate as a variable affecting the return to human capital. As a result financial d...

We examine the role of financial development in economic growth in the former Communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States during the first two decades since the beginning of transition. These countries, which had undeveloped financial systems under Communism, provide an interesting test of the relationship between financial development and growth...

The paper presents panel data evidence for 13 transition countries on inflation, financial development and growth. It contributes to the growth literature by showing that the transition countries conform to developed country evidence in particular with the strong negative effect of inflation on growth. It also contributes more evidence to the debate on the role of financial development. Once in...

Aging populations are leading countries worldwide to social security reforms. Many countries are moving from pay-as-you-go to personal retirement account (PRA) systems because of their financial sustainability and positive impact on private savings. PRA systems boost private savings at a macro level by converting a government liability into financial wealth managed by private fund managers. How...

Understanding how capital flows within rural communities in sub-Saharan Africa can provide important insights on the nature of poverty and the effectiveness of financial intermediation interventions. In this paper, we use unique individual level savings and borrowing data to study the flow of funds within a sample of 104 Ugandan savings groups. We show that poor households borrow from wealthier...

We analyze recent contributions to growth theory based on the model of expanding variety of Romer (1990). In the first part, we present different versions of the benchmark linear model with imperfect competition. These include the “labequipment” model, “labor-for-intermediates” and “directed technical change”. We review applications of the expanding variety framework to the analysis of internat...

This paper uses a new time series dataset of shareholder protection consisting of 60 annual legal indicators for the period 1970-2005 for France, Germany, the UK and the US. On the basis of these data it examines developments in shareholder protection and reassesses the claims that common-law countries have better shareholder protection than civil law countries. Furthermore it examines the rela...

Why did the stock market decline so much in the early 1970’s and remain low until the early 1980’s? We argue that it was because information technology arrived on the scene and the stock-market incumbents of the day were not ready to implement it. Instead, new firms would bring in the new technology after the mid-1980’s. Investors foresaw this in the early 1970’s and stock prices fell right awa...

We study how foreign bank penetration affects financial sector development in poor countries. A theoretical model shows that when domestic banks are better than foreign banks at monitoring soft information customers, foreign bank entry may hurt these customers and worsen welfare. The model also predicts that credit to the private sector should be lower in countries with more foreign bank penetr...