Wealth, Financial Intermediation and Growth

This paper presents empirical support for the existence of wealth effects in the contribution of financial intermediation to economic growth, and offers a theoretical explanation for these effects. Using GMM dynamic panel data techniques applied to study the growth-promoting effects of financial intermediation, we show that the exogenous contribution of financial development to economic growth has different effects for different levels of income per capita. We find that this contribution is generally increasing with the level of income per capita of the economy, up to a relatively high level of income.