Financial structure and economic growth nexus revisited

This paper empirically reassesses the long-debated relationship between the financial structure and economic growth. Specifically, we examine whether the effect of financial structure on economic growth is affected by the occurrence of banking crisis and economic volatility, the level of financial development, and the financial structure disproportion. We employ the generalized method of moments estimation to a panel of 99 countries over the 1971–2015 period. Although the main result supports the market-based view, the positive effect of the securities market development relative to the banking system weakens significantly if the financial structure is unbalanced. Our findings are robust to a variety of sensitivity checks, including different measures of financial structure, time periods, and model specifications.