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August 1995 - Problems associated with Sub-Saharan Africa's slow growth are low school attainment, political instability, poorly developed financial systems, large black-market exchange-rate premia, large government deficits, and inadequate infrastructure. Improving policies alone boosts growth substantially. But if neighboring countries adopt a policy change together, the effects on growth are more than double what they would have been if one country had acted alone. Africa's economic history since 1960 fits the classical definition of tragedy: potential unfulfilled, with disastrous consequences. Easterly and Levine use one methodology - cross-country regressions - to account for Sub-Saharan Africa's growth performance over the past 30 years and to suggest policies to promote growth over the next 30 years. They statistically quantify the relationship between long-run growth and a wider array of factors than any previous study. They consider such standard variables as initial income to capture convergence effects, schooling, political stability, and indicators of monetary, fiscal, trade, exchange rate, and financial sector policies. They also consider such new measures as infrastructure development, cultural diversity, and economic spillovers from neighbors' growth. Their analysis: Improves substantially on past attempts to account for the growth experience of Sub-Saharan African countries; Shows that low school attainment, political instability, poorly developed financial systems, large black-market exchange-rate premia, large government deficits, and inadequate infrastructure are associated with slow growth; Finds that Africa's ethnic diversity tends to slow growth and reduce the likelihood of adopting good policies; Identifies spillovers of growth performance between neighboring countries. The spillover effects of growth have implications for policy strategy. Improving policies alone boosts growth substantially, but if neighboring countries act together, the effects on growth are much greater. Specifically, the results suggest that the effect of neighbors' adopting a policy change is 2.2 times greater than if a single country acted alone. This paper - a joint product of the Macroeconomics and Growth Division and the Finance and Private Sector Development Division, Policy Research Department - is part of a larger effort in the department to understand the link between policies and growth. The study was funded by the Bank's Research Support Budget under the research project Patterns of Growth (RPO 678-26).

Black Market --- Business Cycle --- Country Regressions --- Currencies and Exchange Rates --- Economic Growth --- Economic Theory and Research --- Educational Attainment --- Exchange Rate --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Financial Development --- Financial Sector --- Financial Systems --- Growth --- Growth Performance --- Growth Rate --- Growth Rates --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- Inequality --- Long-Run Growth --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Nutrition --- Per Capita Income --- Policy Change --- Policy Research --- Political Instability --- Political Stability --- Poor Countries --- Poor Growth --- Poverty Reduction --- Pro-Poor Growth

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July 1999 - This new database of indicators of financial development and structure across countries and over time unites a range of indicators that measure the size, activity, and efficiency of financial intermediaries and markets. Beck, Demirguc-Kunt, and Levine introduce a new database of indicators of financial development and structure across countries and over time. This database is unique in that it unites a variety of indicators that measure the size, activity, and efficiency of financial intermediaries and markets. It improves on previous efforts by presenting data on the public share of commercial banks, by introducing indicators of the size and activity of nonbank financial institutions, and by presenting measures of the size of bond and primary equity markets. The compiled data permit the construction of financial structure indicators to measure whether, for example, a country's banks are larger, more active, and more efficient than its stock markets. These indicators can then be used to investigate the empirical link between the legal, regulatory, and policy environment and indicators of financial structure. They can also be used to analyze the implications of financial structure for economic growth. Beck, Demirguc-Kunt, and Levine describe the sources and construction of, and the intuition behind, different indicators and present descriptive statistics. This paper - a product of Finance, Development Research Group - is part of a broader effort in the group to understand the determinants of financial structure and its importance to economic development. The authors may be contacted at tbeck@worldbank.org, ademirguckunt@worldbank.org, or rlevine@csom.umn.edu.

Bank --- Banks and Banking Reform --- Bond --- Bond Markets --- Commercial Banks --- Corporate Law --- Debt Markets --- Emerging Markets --- Equity --- Equity Markets --- Finance --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Financial Crises --- Financial Institutions --- Financial Intermediaries --- Financial Literacy --- Financial Sector --- Financial Systems --- Insurance --- Insurance Companies --- Law and Development --- Money --- Non Bank Financial Institutions --- Ownership --- Pension --- Pension Funds --- Private Sector Development --- Stock --- Stock Market

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Zonder onderwerpscode

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Banks and banking. --- Financial institutions. --- Investments. --- Risk management. --- Securities. --- Stock exchanges.