The German bank–growth nexus revisited: savings banks and economic growth in Prussia†

This article provides evidence that smaller, regional public financial intermediaries contributed to Germany's industrial development, using a new dataset of the foundation year and location of Prussian savings banks. This extends the bank–growth nexus beyond its traditional focus on large universal banks. Since savings banks were public financial intermediaries, our results further suggest that state intervention can be successful in the financial sector, particularly at the early stages of industrial development when capital requirements are manageable, and access to international capital markets is limited.     

Equity,Bonds, Institutional Debt and Economic Growth: Evidence from South Africa

We examine the finance‐growth nexus in South Africa accounting for the role of bond markets, stock markets, and bank and non‐bank financial intermediaries using a vector autoregressive technique. Extant empirical literature has largely accounted for only banks and stock markets, ignoring bond market and non‐bank financial intermediaries. We find that bond market development affects economic growth in South Africa, and no similar effect is observed for the bank and non‐bank financial intermediaries and the stock market. Our finding shows that examination of individual elements of the financial system is important in understanding the unique effect of each on growth. The observation that the bond market rather than stock market, bank and non‐bank institutions promote economic growth in South Africa induces an intriguing question as to what unique roles bond markets play that the intermediaries and equity market are unable to play.     

Financial System and Economic Growth: The Korean Experience

This paper examines the relationship between the development of financial systems and economic growth using Korea as a case study. In particular, we focus on the relative development of financial intermediaries and capital markets, and their impact on the portfolio behavior of the household and business sectors. Causality and non-nested model selection tests show that financial development in general leads economic growth and that financial intermediaries are more important than capital markets in this relationship.     

Financial Development,Market Deregulation and Growth: Evidence from China

In this paper, the relationship between finance and growth is analysed in the context of an endogenous growth model with government regulation and intervention. Our theoretical model suggests that financial intermediaries can affect the process of economic growth in several ways. Using the recent Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) techniques, we test our model in a panel data set covering 29 Chinese provinces over the period of 1990–2001. Empirical results show that financial development and government deregulation in the financial sector significantly promote China's economic growth.     

Financial Intermediation Development and Economic Growth： Does the Chinese Counterexample Exist？

In terms of the degree-of-freedom of bank loan decision-making, the ratio of loans of private enterprises and individuals to total loans is used to measure the development of China ＇s financial intermediation. Applying generalized method of moments estimation developed for dynamic panel data models, the present paper finds that the effect of financial intermediation development on economic growth is positive and statistieally significant when controlling for other variables, such as human capital foreign direct investment, securitization and foreign trade. The empirical results indicate that the concept of the so-called Chinese counterexample in financial development is questionable. Financial system reforms, including encouraging banks to operate independently, reducing or eliminating mandatory loans, and maldngfinancial decision-making more market-oriented, are important for China＇s economic growth.     

金融中介、股票市场与经济增长:基于联立方程模型的实证分析

文章利用1998～2009年的季度数据,通过构建联立方程模型,利用GMM估计方法系统考察了中国金融中介、股票市场与经济增长之间的相互关系.实证研究结果表明:金融中介发展与经济增长二者相互影响,但作用方向不同:金融中介的总体规模对经济发展的影响为负;经济增长对于金融中介的发展存在显著的正向作用;股票市场发展与经济增长二者...     

商业银行资本约束困境及改进路径分析

资本充足率是现代商业银行的生命线,保持充足的资本是其得以生存与发展,进而有效维护金融安全的重要条件。2009年以来,商业银行信贷的大量投放极大地促进了经济的企稳回升,也不可避免地给银行资本充足率带来较大压力。本文在介绍我国商业银行资本不足原因的基础上,通过对各种提高资本充足率途径的分析,提出了当前形势下提高资本充足率的策略建议。     

Development of financial intermediation and economic growth: The Chinese experience

Using Chinese provincial data from 1985 to 1999 and applying recent GMM techniques developed for dynamic panels, this paper examines how the development of financial intermediation influences China's economic growth during the post-1978 reform period. Our econometric results show that China's financial intermediation development contributes to its rapid economic growth through two channels: first, the substitution of loans for state budget appropriation and second, the mobilization of household savings. Loan expansion, however, does not contribute to growth since loan distribution by financial intermediaries is inefficient. Deep financial sector reform aimed at correcting this inefficiency is desirable, and is expected to sustain China's economic development in the future.     

“Post‐Truth,” “Alternative Facts” and “Fakenomics”

South African companies are accused of hoarding profits to accumulate large amounts of “idle” cash, as well as of being the perpetrators of massive illegal capital flight. This paper argues that much of the claimed corporate cash is either offshore or belongs to banks. It reminds that bank deposits increase when companies borrow, not when they retain profits. It shows, too, that measures of massive capital flight actually reflect data errors. Exaggerating, through faulty methodology the extent to which companies have cash or may be involved in illegal capital flight is unhelpful. It exacerbates already‐fraught government‐business relations, and complicates the search for solutions to South Africa's economic problems.     

科技创新金融支持体系的构建及作用机制——基于企业生命周期理论的视角

构建科技创新金融支持体系是解决科技企业不同生命周期融资困境的有效手段。本文从金融市场需求主体的特性和供给主体的作用两方面分析,认为政策性金融、金融中介、资本市场和风险投资是与企业生命周期相适应的金融供给部门,并在此基础上构建了科技创新金融支持体系,即在政府引导下,以银行中介为主,银行和金融市场并存,且相互融合渗透、相互依赖竞争的混合型科技创新金融支持体系。     

Does Property Rights Reform Improve the Efficiency of China＇s State-owned Banks？

China ＂s state-owned banks have undergone radical changes over the past two decades, including partial privatization and listing in both the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and the Shanghai Stock Exchange. This paper evaluates the effects of these changes by analyzing the efficiency of Chinese banks over the period 1998-2012 using two frontier techniques and comparative analysis. The findings suggest that the performance and technical efficiency of the Big Four banks improved considerably after property rights reform, but this improvement is not sufficient to keep the banks at the production frontier. Tobit regressions confirm that static ownership effects are negative but that the property rights reform has had significant and positive effects on the technical efficiency of state-owned commercial banks. GDP growth and the financial crisis have had positive effects on the efficiency of Chinese banks, which is more significant for joint stock commercial banks than state-owned commercial banks. The results indicate the value of ownership reforms of state-owned asset management companies and insurance companies and the establishment of a countercyclical capital buffer.     

Financial systems, risk management, and entrepreneurship: historical perspectives

Economic historians find that the most successful economies of history tend to be ones that early in their modern histories developed sophisticated financial systems that subsequently sustained their development and growth. Financial economists are finding the same association of financial development and growth across a wider range of countries and levels of economic development in recent decades. This essay argues that more sophisticated financial systems not only mobilize more capital and allocate capital more efficiently than do less developed systems. By offering more sophisticated methods of managing and reducing risks than primitive financial systems, modern financial systems, perhaps paradoxically, also promote higher levels of risk taking and entrepreneurship.     

‘The rules of the game’: London finance,Australia, and Canada,c.1900–14

It is often asserted that, between 1865 and 1914, economic dependence on British capital subjected settler societies to an unofficial imperialism wielded by the City of London. This article argues that both advocates and critics of such models, particularly in the recent controversy over ‘gentlemanly capitalism’, pay insufficient attention to the City itself. Using the Edwardian City's connections with Australia and Canada, it illustrates the range of financial intermediaries involved and explores their perceptions of political economy in these countries. It concludes that the City's influence (or ‘structural power’) was limited by its internal divisions and hazy conceptions of political economy.     

Did banks cause the German industrialization?

In this paper, we discuss the causal relationship between growth of bank assets and economic performance (economic growth, capital accumulation, productivity). We analyze new data for German banking (Burhop, C., 2002. Die Entwicklung der deutschen Aktienkreditbanken von 1848 bis 1913: Quantifizierungsversuche. Bankhistorisches Archiv 28, 103-128.) and improved national accounting data (Burhop, C., Wolff, G.B., 2005. A compromise estimate of Germany’s Net National Product 1851-1913 and its relevance for economic growth and cycles. forthcoming, Journal of Economic History.) with several recent VAR/VEC based causality tests. Only weak evidence for a causal influence of banks on economic performance on a nation-wide level is detected. On the other hand, the results support the bank-led growth hypothesis for the modern sector of the German economy. In particular, joint-stock credit banks positively influenced capital formation during the early decades of Germany’s industrialization.     

Financial intermediaries and economic development: The Belgian case

Abstract

The role of financial intermediaries in economic development has been highlighted, most recently, by John Gurley and Edward Shaw, who contend that most economists consider only real variables in their analyses of economic development while neglecting those which are strictly financial in nature.¹ To remedy this neglect Gurley and Shaw have constructed a model which stresses the developmental aspects of financial intermediaries. This paper is an application of that model to Belgium in the 1830s. It first presents the model in skeletal form and then briefly describes the state of the Belgian economy during the 1830's. The focal point of the paper is an analysis of the activities of the Société Générale de Belgique and the Banque de Belgique, the first large-scale financial intermediaries to engage in development finance.     

我国中小股份制商业银行开展投资银行业务的发展策略

由于外资银行抢夺中国市场和存贷款利差受到挤压,国内商业银行都在力图突破传统的经营模式,迅速开发新的业务品种,有效开辟新的利润增长点。加之国内企业在资本市场融资额猛增,商业银行开展部分投资银行业务的政策环境也已具备,各商业银行纷纷把目光投向收益较高、潜力巨大的投资银行业务市场。在这种背景下,如何拓展投资银行业务成为我国银行界一个需要着重思考的战略性课题,也是商业银行在以后的竞争中立于不败之地的重要战略途径。     

Economic Reform,Structural Changes,and Regional Economic Growth in China: Cross-Province Regressions

Through cross-province growth regressions this paper analyses the relationship between China's regional economic growth and economic reforms and structural changes since 1978. By applying the extreme bound analysis, the paper has demonstrated the statistical significance and robustness of the estimated coefficients of the following variables of interest: share of the state sector, share of foreign capital in capital formation, extra-budgetary funds to GNP ratio, and standard deviation of inflation. With these and such ‘always-included’ variables as GNP share of investment and initial level of illiteracy, regression models explain about 60% of cross-province variations in growth. The results suggest that continuing reductions in the state sector and attraction of foreign capital are two of the most important factors for rapid per capital income growth in China.     

Identifying Financial Distress Indicators of Selected Banks in Asia

The banking sector plays a pivotal role in the economic development of most Asian countries. In 1997, a full-fledged banking and financial crisis took place in South Asian countries. Many banks had to be bailed out by their governments. It is believed that an examination of indicators that led to the problems suffered by banks in this region will be of enormous benefit. Models were developed for each country that identified banks experiencing financial distress as a function of financial ratios. The countries in the study include Indonesia, South Korea and Thailand. The banking sectors of these three countries are ideal for this study, as the banks enjoyed profitability during the pre-crisis period and were the most severely affected by the financial crisis in 1997. Logistic regression was used to analyze the data sample from 1995 to 1997. In the findings, capital adequacy, loan management and operating efficiency are three common performance dimensions found to be able to identify problem banks in all three countries. It is hoped that the financial ratios and results of the models will be useful to bankers and regulators in identifying problem banks in Asia.     

Financial Structure,Technology, and Economic Growth: A Structural Matching Perspective

Different types of capital are better suited to financing technologies with different risk profiles, and structural matching between finance and technology may critically influence economic growth. Using cross-province panel data from China, we estimated the impact of the matching relationship between regions' financial structure and technology level on economic growth. We show that: (i) the matching relationship had a statistically significant positive impact on economic growth; (ii) structural mismatching reduced economic growth in comparison with the optimal matching point; (iii) structural matching better facilitated economic growth in more developed regions; and (iv) capital accumulation and technological progress were two of the main channels through which matching influenced economic growth. We address potential endogeneity concerns and perform robustness checks, and our results remain valid. Our findings provide convincing evidence for the optimal financial structure theory and explain China's rapid growth despite its comparatively underdeveloped securities market.     

Financial revolutions and economic growth: Introducing this EEH symposium

This special issue of Explorations in Economic History includes four articles that delve into the 19th century financial development of Belgium, Germany, Sweden, and Japan, and relate these developments to economic growth. In this guest editor’s introduction, we survey current thinking about “financial revolutions” and their role in rapidly assembling the factors that can set modern growth into motion, and link this paradigm to both the more traditional and recent literatures on banks, stock markets, and growth. We conclude with summaries and some commentary on the articles that follow.