IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/9333.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Historical Perspectives on Financial Development and Economic Growth

Author

Listed:
  • Peter L. Rousseau

Abstract

This paper uses standard tools of empirical macro economics to examine how well the existing historical time series support a role for financial factors in real sector activity in four economies that experienced what are widely considered to be 'financial revolutions' over the past 400 years. The evidence presented for the Dutch Republic (1600-1794), England (1700-1850), the United States (1790-1850), and Japan (1880-1913) suggests that the emergence of financial instruments, institutions, and markets played a central role in promoting trade, commerce, and industrialization. Cross- section regressions with a wider set of countries for the post-1850 period offer additional support for the Schumpeterian view of finance in growth. Though limitations of the available data argue for a cautious interpretation, the findings are consistent with the traditional and more descriptive analyses of these events in the economic history literature, and with results obtained for the post-1960 period by modern macro economists.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter L. Rousseau, 2002. "Historical Perspectives on Financial Development and Economic Growth," NBER Working Papers 9333, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:9333
    Note: DAE EFG ME
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w9333.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Levine, Ross & Zervos, Sara, 1998. "Stock Markets, Banks, and Economic Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(3), pages 537-558, June.
    2. Rousseau, Peter L. & Sylla, Richard, 2005. "Emerging financial markets and early US growth," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 1-26, January.
    3. Robert J. Barro, 1991. "Economic Growth in a Cross Section of Countries," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(2), pages 407-443.
    4. Greenwood, Jeremy & Smith, Bruce D., 1997. "Financial markets in development, and the development of financial markets," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 145-181, January.
    5. Rousseau, Peter L & Wachtel, Paul, 1998. "Financial Intermediation and Economic Performance: Historical Evidence from Five Industrialized Countries," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 30(4), pages 657-678, November.
    6. Robert G. King & Ross Levine, 1993. "Finance and Growth: Schumpeter Might Be Right," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 108(3), pages 717-737.
    7. Michael D. Bordo & Alan M. Taylor & Jeffrey G. Williamson, 2003. "Globalization in Historical Perspective," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number bord03-1, January.
    8. Greenwood, Jeremy & Jovanovic, Boyan, 1990. "Financial Development, Growth, and the Distribution of Income," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(5), pages 1076-1107, October.
    9. Peter L. Rousseau & Richard Sylla, 2003. "Financial Systems, Economic Growth, and Globalization," NBER Chapters, in: Globalization in Historical Perspective, pages 373-416, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Steven M. Fazzari & R. Glenn Hubbard & Bruce C. Petersen, 1988. "Financing Constraints and Corporate Investment," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 19(1), pages 141-206.
    11. Ross Levine, 1997. "Financial Development and Economic Growth: Views and Agenda," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 35(2), pages 688-726, June.
    12. Johansen, Soren, 1991. "Estimation and Hypothesis Testing of Cointegration Vectors in Gaussian Vector Autoregressive Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(6), pages 1551-1580, November.
    13. Huffman, Wallace E & Lothian, James R, 1980. "Money in the United Kingdom, 1833-80," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 12(2), pages 155-174, May.
    14. Rousseau, Peter L., 1999. "Finance, investment, and growth in Meiji-era Japan," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 185-198, April.
    15. Osterwald-Lenum, Michael, 1992. "A Note with Quantiles of the Asymptotic Distribution of the Maximum Likelihood Cointegration Rank Test Statistics," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 54(3), pages 461-472, August.
    16. Axel Leijonhufvud (ed.), 2001. "Monetary Theory as a Basis for Monetary Policy," International Economic Association Series, Palgrave Macmillan, number 978-1-4039-3961-6, June.
    17. Maurice Obstfeld, 1986. "International Finance," NBER Working Papers 2077, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Sims, Christopher A & Stock, James H & Watson, Mark W, 1990. "Inference in Linear Time Series Models with Some Unit Roots," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 58(1), pages 113-144, January.
    19. William C. Brainard & James Tobin, 1968. "Pitfalls in Financial Model-Building," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 244, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    20. David, Paul A., 1967. "The Growth of Real Product in the United States Before 1840: New Evidence, Controlled Conjectures," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 27(2), pages 151-197, June.
    21. Bordo, Michael D. & Jonung, Lars, 2000. "A Return to the Convertibility Principle? Monetary And Fiscal Regimes in Historical Perspective," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 415, Stockholm School of Economics.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rousseau, Peter L. & Sylla, Richard, 2005. "Emerging financial markets and early US growth," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 1-26, January.
    2. Howard Bodenhorn, 2016. "Two Centuries of Finance and Growth in the United States, 1790-1980," Working Papers id:11352, eSocialSciences.
    3. Kim, Jong Hun & Rousseau, Peter L., 2012. "Credit buildups and the stock market in four East Asian economies," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 489-503.
    4. Peter L. Rousseau & Richard Sylla, 2003. "Financial Systems, Economic Growth, and Globalization," NBER Chapters, in: Globalization in Historical Perspective, pages 373-416, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Popov, Alexander, 2017. "Evidence on finance and economic growth," Working Paper Series 2115, European Central Bank.
    6. Beck, Thorsten & Levine, Ross & Loayza, Norman, 2000. "Finance and the sources of growth," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(1-2), pages 261-300.
    7. Denizer Cevdet A. & Iyigun Murat F. & Owen Ann, 2002. "Finance and Macroeconomic Volatility," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 2(1), pages 1-32, October.
    8. Thorsten Beck, 2009. "The Econometrics of Finance and Growth," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Terence C. Mills & Kerry Patterson (ed.), Palgrave Handbook of Econometrics, chapter 25, pages 1180-1209, Palgrave Macmillan.
    9. Nieuwerburgh, Stijn Van & Buelens, Frans & Cuyvers, Ludo, 2006. "Stock market development and economic growth in Belgium," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 13-38, January.
    10. Joydeep Biswas, 2008. "Does Finance Lead to Economic Growth? An Empirical Assessment of 12 Asian Economies," Margin: The Journal of Applied Economic Research, National Council of Applied Economic Research, vol. 2(3), pages 229-246, August.
    11. Muhammad Shahbaz & Ijaz Ur Rehman & Ahmed Taneem Muzaffar, 2015. "Re-Visiting Financial Development and Economic Growth Nexus: The Role of Capitalization in Bangladesh," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 83(3), pages 452-471, September.
    12. Mariusz Prochniak & Katarzyna Wasiak, 2017. "The impact of the financial system on economic growth in the context of the global crisis: empirical evidence for the EU and OECD countries," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 44(2), pages 295-337, May.
    13. Rousseau, Peter L. & Vuthipadadorn, Dadanee, 2005. "Finance, investment, and growth: Time series evidence from 10 Asian economies," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 87-106, March.
    14. Andrew Phiri, 2015. "Asymmetric cointegration and causality effects between financial development and economic growth in South Africa," Studies in Economics and Finance, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 32(4), pages 464-484, October.
    15. Peter L. Rousseau, 2004. "A Common Currency: Early U.S. Monetary Policy and the Transition to the Dollar," NBER Working Papers 10702, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. repec:ipg:wpaper:2014-485 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Burhop, Carsten, 2006. "Did banks cause the German industrialization?," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 39-63, January.
    18. Peter L. Rousseau & Paul Wachtel, 2015. "Episodes of Financial Deepening: Credit Booms or Growth Generators?," Working Papers 15-09, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics.
    19. Laurent Cavenaile & Christian Gengenbach & Franz Palm, 2014. "Stock Markets, Banks and Long Run Economic Growth: A Panel Cointegration-Based Analysis," De Economist, Springer, vol. 162(1), pages 19-40, March.
    20. Najia Saqib, 2015. "Review of Literature on Finance-Growth Nexus," Journal of Applied Finance & Banking, SCIENPRESS Ltd, vol. 5(4), pages 1-11.
    21. Manuel Ennes Ferreira & João Dias & Jelson Serafim, 2022. "Stock Market and Economic Growth: Evidence from Africa," Working Papers REM 2022/0228, ISEG - Lisbon School of Economics and Management, REM, Universidade de Lisboa.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
    • G10 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:9333. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.