Government Expenditure in Enforcing the Law, Financial Intermediation and Development

This paper presents a neoclassical growth model with financial intermediation in which government expenditure is used to enforce the law. Government expenditure increases the probability that the financial contract are enforced and reduces financial intermediation costs. There is a feed back process: low per capita capital involves low government expenditure and low probability of enforcing financial contracts, which reduces the incentives to accumulate capital. As a consequence of this feed back process there are three steady states: one without financial intermediation and low per capita capital, another with low probability of enforcing the financial contract and medium per capita capital and other with high probability of enforcing the contract and high per capita capital. The dynamic around the steady state with low enforcing probability is characterized by multiple equilibria and cyclical behavior, the dynamics around the two others steady states presents the typical saddle point dynamics.