Financial Deepening In Economic Development

Monograph on the role of financial deepening in economic development, or the accumulation of financial assets at a pace faster than accumulation of nonfinancial wealth, through focus on the liberalization of financial markets - discusses classical economic theories regarding capital formation, advocates coordination of financial policy and fiscal policy reforms to deepen finance, and examines effects on the foreign exchange market, trade, capital flows, etc. References.

The global financial crisis experience shone a spotlight on the dangers of financial systems that have grown too big too fast. This note reexamines financial deepening, focusing on what emerging markets can learn from the advanced economy experience. It finds that gains for growth and stability from financial deepening remain large for most emerging markets, but there are limits on size and speed. When financial deepening outpaces the strength of the supervisory framework, it leads to excessive risk taking and instability. Encouragingly, the set of regulatory reforms that promote financial depth is essentially the same as those that contribute to greater stability. Better regulation—not necessarily more regulation—thus leads to greater possibilities both for development and stability.

We propose a coherent unified approach to the study of the linkages among economic growth, financial structure, and inequality, bringing together disparate theoretical and empirical literature. That is, we show how to conduct model-based quantitative research on transitional paths. With analytical and numerical methods, we calibrate and make tractable a prototype canonical model and take it to an application, namely, Thailand 1976-1996, an emerging economy in a phase of economic expansion with uneven financial deepening and increasing inequality. We broadly replicate the actual data, test the model formally, and identify anomalies.

Tiivistelmä.

"Financial development increases a country's resilience and boosts economic growth. It mobilizes savings, promotes information sharing, improves resource allocation, and facilitates diversification and management of risk. It also promotes financial stability to the extent that deep and liquid financial systems with diverse instruments help dampen the impact of shocks. But is there a point beyond which the benefits of financial development begin to decline and costs start to rise, and have emerging markets (EMs) reached these limits? This paper takes stock of where EMs are on the stability-growth tradeoff that financial development entails, and considers whether there is further scope for financial development, and how EMs can secure a safe process of financial development."--Executive summary.

There have been profound changes in both political and economic institutions in China over the last twenty years. Moreover, the pace of transition has led to variation across the country in the level of development. In this paper, we use panel data for the Chinese provinces to study the role of legal institutions, financial deepening and political pluralism on growth rates. The most important institutional developments for a transition economy are the emergence and legalization of the market economy, the establishment of secure property rights, the growth of a private sector, the developmentof financial sector institutions and markets, and the liberalization of political institutions. We develop measures of these phenomena, which are used as explanatory variables in regression models to explainprovincial GDP growth rates. Our evidence suggests that the development of financial markets, legal environment, awareness of property rights and political pluralism are associated with stronger growth.

This collection empirically and conceptually advances our understanding of the intricacies of emerging markets’ financial and macroeconomic development in the post-2008 crisis context. Covering a vast geography and a broad range of economic viewpoints, this study serves as an informed guide in the unchartered waters of fundamental uncertainty as it has been redefined in the post-crisis period. Contributors to the collection go beyond risks-opportunities analyses, looking deeper into the nuanced interpretations of data and economic categories as interplay of developing world characteristics in the context of redefined fundamental uncertainty. Those concerns relate to the issues of small country finance, the industrialization of the developing world, the role of commodity cycles in the global economy, sovereign debt, speculative financial flows and currency pressures, and connections between financial markets and real markets. Compact and comprehensive, this collection offers unique perspectives into contemporary issues of financial deepening and real macroeconomic development in small developing economies that rarely surface in the larger policy and development debates.