Financial globalization and long-run growth: is Asia different?

Based on the meta-regression analysis this paper examines the long term relationship between growth and financial globalization in Asia. There is little evidence that financial globalization has had a positive impact on growth for the world as a whole. This pattern is broadly repeated for different groups of Asian countries but with some interesting differences. Compared to the global sample, there were more instances of a negative association between financial globalization and growth for Asia. Perhaps the most striking difference between the results for Asia and for the larger sample of countries relates to the impact of debt financing, particularly bank debt, with external bank financing has a negative impact on long run growth in nearly a quarter of all cases. The negative association between financial globalization and growth is more prevalent in the group of East Asian countries than for emerging Asia or Asia as a whole.