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...

If there were no impediments to the ‡ow of capital across space, then the returns to capital should be equalized. We provide evidence to the contrary. There are large di¤erences in the return to comparable investments across di¤erent towns in the state of Tamil Nadu in South India. We explore why these di¤erences are not arbitraged away –and suggest that if an insider has monopoly power in arbi...

In a field experiment that constructs randomized credit limit shock, participants borrow to spend 11 cents on the dollar in first quarter and 28 by third year. Effects extend those far from limit, who had new limits as available credit, with liquid asset buffer. short-run, flexible installment contracts are used tandem, unconstrained using installments more. Long-run borrowing is predominantly ...

Trading frictions in financial markets affect more long-term than short-term bonds, generating an upward-sloping yield curve. Long-term financing is expensive economies with higher trading so firms choose to borrow and invest shorter horizons lower productivity projects. The theory guides a new identification of the slope liquidity spread data. We measure calibrate model for United States, coun...

Expanding credit access in developing contexts could help some households while harming others. Microcredit studies show different effects at quantiles of household profit, including negative effects; yet these findings also differ across studies. I develop new Bayesian hierarchical models to aggregate the evidence on distributional for mixture-type outcomes such as profit. Applying them microc...

This paper attempts to provide a critical appraisal of the debate on the effectiveness of microfinance as a universal poverty reduction tool. It argues that while microfinance has developed some innovative management and business strategies, its impact on poverty reduction remains in doubt. Microfinance, however, certainly plays an important role in providing safety-net and consumption smoothen...

Ross Levine and Sara Zervos Abstract: Do well-functioning stock markets and banks promote long-run economic growth? This paper shows that stock market liquidity and banking development both positively, predict growth, capital accumulation, and productivity improvements when entered together in regressions, even after controlling for economic and political factors. The results are consistent wit...

This paper develops an asymmetric information model that provides an economic rational for co-signing. It is shown that banks can solve adverse selection problems by offering a co-signing contract that induces a risky and a safe firm to group together. The equilibrium co-signing debt contract strictly Pareto dominates an equilibrium without a co-signer if the latter entails rationing. The debt ...

Banking sector openness may directly increase growth by improving the quality of financial services and increasing funds available, or indirectly by improving the efficiency of financial intermediaries, both of which may reduce the cost of financing, in turn, increase capital accumulation and economic growth. The objective of the paper is to empirically reinvestigate these direct and indirect l...