Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T02:42:09.696Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Legal-political factors and the historical evolution of the finance-growth link

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 December 2006

MICHAEL D. BORDO
Affiliation:
Professor of Economics, Rutgers University, New Brunswick NJ, USA and Research Associate, NBER
PETER L. ROUSSEAU
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Economics, Vanderbilt University, Box 1819 Station B, Nashville TN 37235, USA and Research Associate, NBER
Get access

Abstract

Recent cross-country investigations of the role of institutional fundamentals, such as the protection of property rights, in promoting financial development have extended a literature that has for decades maintained that financial factors can affect real outcomes. In this article we pursue this new direction by considering relationships between finance, growth, legal origin, and the political environment in a historical cross-section of 17 countries covering the period from 1880 to 1997. We find that relationships between a country's legal origin (such as English, French, German, or Scandinavian) and financial development are for the most part consistent with earlier findings but are not persistent. At the same time, political variables such as proportional representation election systems, frequent elections, universal female suffrage, and infrequent revolutions or coups seem linked to larger financial sectors and higher conditional rates of economic growth. Despite the explanatory power of some of our measures of the deeper fundamentals, however, a significant part of the growth-enhancing role of financial development remains unexplained by them.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Cambridge University Press 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)