This paper contributes to the finance-growth literature by examining the political economy origins of some of the most successful financial markets in Europe and Asia. It provides historical evidence from London, Amsterdam and Hong Kong that highlights the essential role played by the government...

Using a large panel dataset of Chinese manufacturing enterprises during 1999-2005, which accounts for over 90% of China's industrial output, and robust econometric procedures we show that the Chinese banking system has helped to support the growth of both firm value added and TFP. We find that...

We show that previous results suggesting that government ownership of banks is associated with lower long run growth rates are not robust to adding more 'fundamental' determinants of economic growth. We also present new cross-country evidence for 1995-2007 which suggests that, if anything,...