Stock market development and financial intermediary growth : a research agenda

Abstract

Empirical evidence suggests that financial services - such as mobilizing savings, managing risk, allocating resources, and facilitating transactions - influence and are influenced by economic development. And financial crises - widespread bank failures, the collapse of stock markets - can impede and even reverse economic advances. With this in mind, the World Bank made special efforts in the 1980s to help countries improve their financial systems and cope with financial crises that threatened economic prosperity. Bank programs focused on core financial themes (loosening up interest rates, reducing government involvement in credit allocation, rationalizing taxes on financial intermediaries) and on managing bank failures, rehabilitating insolvent banks, and training bank managers and supervisors. Recently, Bank programs have stressed the development of capital markets, especially stock markets, but little research has been done in measuring the level ofstock market development or understanding the relationship between the development of stock markets and the functioning of financial intermediaries. The authors did some preliminary research on these issues and suggest further topics for research. They propose different empirical indicators of stock market development. They also suggest how to use these indicators to help evaluate stock market development policies. They find that the relationship between the development of stock markets and the functioning of financial intermediaries may be complementary.Economic Theory&Research,Financial Intermediation,Health Economics&Finance,Banks&Banking Reform,Access to Markets