The paper recounts the history of the finance-growth nexus research from its origins to the yearly 1990s. The contributions are analyzed in connection with the socioeconomic context and advances in economic theory. Many ideas first expressed decades ago are still subject to constant discussions...

The literature on systematic fiscal policy and macroeconomic performance in industrialized countries is large but fragmented. Based on a broad overview of that literature, several patterns emerge. First, the empirical literature points toward strongly anticyclical policy, which consists of...

The influence of VAT applied to financial services on the size of the financial sector is analyzed empirically. The authors use data from 36 European Union and OECD countries for the period from 1961 to 2012. Dynamic panel data techniques are used, concretely the GMM System. An unbalanced panel...