Law, Endowment, and Finance
54 Pages Posted: 1 Aug 2002 Last revised: 3 Nov 2022
Date Written: August 2002
Abstract
This paper assesses two theories regarding the historical determinants of international differences in financial development. The law and finance theory holds that legal traditions differ in terms of the priority they attach to protecting the rights of private investors vis-a-vis the State and this has important implications for financial development. The endowment theory argues that the disease and geographical environment influence the formation of long-lasting institutions that influence financial development. Using a sample of former colonies, we explore whether the legal system brought by colonizers and/or the initial disease/geographical endowments encountered by colonizers explain financial development today. The empirical results indicate that both the legal systems brought by colonizers and the initial endowments in the colonies are important determinants of stock market development and private property rights protection. However, initial endowments are more robustly associated with financial intermediary development than legal origin and initial endowments explain more of the cross-country variation in financial intermediary and stock market development than legal origin.
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?
Recommended Papers
-
Financial Dependence and Growth
By Raghuram G. Rajan and Luigi Zingales
-
Stock Markets, Banks, and Growth: Panel Evidence
By Thorsten Beck and Ross Levine
-
Stock Markets, Banks, and Growth: Panel Evidence
By Thorsten Beck and Ross Levine
-
Stock Markets, Banks, and Economic Growth
By Ross Levine and Sara Zervos
-
Financial Development and Economic Growth: Views and Agenda
By Ross Levine
-
Stock Markets, Banks, and Growth: Correlation or Causality
By Thorsten Beck and Ross Levine
-
By Thorsten Beck, Asli Demirgüç-kunt, ...
-
Finance, Firm Size, and Growth
By Thorsten Beck, Asli Demirgüç-kunt, ...
-
Finance, Firm Size, and Growth
By Thorsten Beck, Asli Demirgüç-kunt, ...
-
Financial Intermediation and Growth: Causality and Causes
By Ross Levine, Norman Loayza, ...