The Ds:Sharp economic downturns follow banking crises; with government revenues falling, fiscal deficits worsen; deficits lead to debt; as debts pile up rating downgrades follow.For the most fortunate countries it does not end in default.

This article introduces the updated and expanded version of the Financial Development and Structure Database. The database includes indicators on the size, efficiency, and stability of banks, nonbank financial institutions, and equity and bond markets over 1960–2007. It also contains...

Thresholds of inflation, government size, trade openness, and per capita income for the finance-growth nexus are investigated using five-year averages of standard variables for 84 countries from 1965 to 2004. The results suggest that (i) high inflation crowds out positive effects of financial...

In a dynamic panel data model allowing for error cross-section dependence, output volatility is found to impede sustainable development. Through a financial development channel (liquidity liability ratio), output volatility exerts a significant effect on depletion of natural resources, a key...

This paper analyzes the process of financial development over the last three to four decades from the perspective of the fundamental frictions (agency and collective) to which economic agents were exposed. A comprehensive statistical benchmarking analysis showed that financial development...

The Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s not only highlighted the welfare consequences of transparency in the financial sector but also linked this relatively narrow problem to the broader context of transparency in governance. It has been observed that objections to transparency, often on...

What are the underlying rationales for industrial policy? Does empirical evidence support the use of industrial policy for correcting market failures that plague the process of industrialization? This article addresses these questions through a critical survey of the analytical literature on...

The recent global financial crisis has shaken the confidence of industrial and developing countries alike in the very blueprint of the financial and macropolicies that underlie the Western capitalist systems. In an effort to contain the crisis from spreading, the authorities in the United States...

The intensity of the crisis in financial markets has surprised nearly everyone. The authors search out the root causes of the crisis, distinguishing them from scapegoating explanations that have been used in policy circles to divert attention from the underlying breakdown of incentives....

As strategies for achieving sustainable growth in developing countries are re-examined in light of the financial crisis, it is critical to take into account structural change and its corollary, industrial upgrading. Economic literature has devoted a great deal of attention to the analysis of...