توسعه مالی، ساختار مالی و سرمایه گذاری داخلی: مدارک بین المللی

Does it matter for domestic investment whether a country's financial system is bank-based or stock-market based? This paper posits that financial intermediation affects domestic investment notably by alleviating financing constraints, allowing firms to increase investment in response to increased demand for output. The key result is that the structure of the financial system has no independent effect on investment, in the sense that it does not enhance the response of investment to changes in output, while financial development makes investment more responsive to output growth. Consequently, rather than promoting a particular type of financial structure, countries should implement policies that reduce transactions costs in financial intermediation and enforce creditor and investor rights. This will facilitate the development of banks and stock markets, which will stimulate domestic investment.

For over a century, economists have debated the comparative merits of bank-based systems and stock-market-based systems in mobilizing resources and enhancing economic growth (see Levine, 2002 for a review of this debate).1 This paper examines whether bank-based or stock-market-based financial systems are better at promoting domestic investment. To investigate this empirical question, the paper posits that financial intermediation affects investment notably by alleviating financing constraints, and that better functioning financial systems allow firms to invest more in response to increased demand for output. It follows that at the aggregate level, developed financial systems are associated with a stronger response of domestic investment to an increase in per capita GDP. This analysis draws from the accelerator theory, which predicts a positive relationship between investment and changes in output.2 The econometric analysis in this paper is based on a sample of 99 countries including developed and developing countries for the period 1965–1997. The effect of financial structure is examined by classifying countries into four categories: financially developed bank-based, financially developed stock-market based, financially underdeveloped bank-based, and financially underdeveloped stock-market-based systems (see Demirgüç-Kunt and Levine, 2001). The analysis uses a dynamic investment equation including lagged investment, an indicator of financial intermediation, an interaction term between the lag of the growth rate of per capita GDP and a dummy for the financial structure category, and other determinants of investment. A significant coefficient on the interaction term implies that financial structure affects domestic investment through the accelerator effect. The paper tests whether financial structure has an independent effect on domestic investment by controlling for the level of financial development using conventional measures of financial intermediation. Effects of financial development on domestic investment are tested using both cross-section and panel data regressions. To circumvent potential simultaneity problems arising from possible two-way relationships between financial intermediation and investment, lags of the financial intermediation indicators are used as instruments in the panel data regressions. In the cross-section regression analysis the initial level of financial development and the country's legal origin are used alternatively as instruments for financial development. The objective is to establish a connection between the exogenous component of financial development and domestic investment and test whether financial structure exerts any incremental effect on domestic investment given the level of financial development. The key finding in this paper is that the structure of the financial system has no independent effect on investment, in the sense that it does not enhance the response of domestic investment to changes in per capita GDP in a model that accounts for the level of financial development and other determinants of investment. In contrast, the overall level of financial development makes domestic investment more responsive to output growth; that is, financial development has an accelerator-enhancing effect on investment. The evidence in this paper suggests that it is the level of financial development, not the type of financial system that matters for domestic investment. This paper is an important contribution to the existing body of empirical research on the links between financial intermediation and economic activity. Specifically it sheds some light on the debate on the role of financial structure and complements recent studies that have concluded that financial structure has no effect on long-run economic growth (Levine, 2002). This paper focuses on an important aspect of economic activity, namely domestic investment, which plays a substantial role in long-run economic growth. Unlike conventional country case studies that have been used to explore the effects of financial structure on economic performance, this paper exploits cross-country variations in both financial structure and domestic investment. The remainder of the text is organized as follows. The next section reviews the literature on the role and comparative merits of banks and stock markets in facilitating domestic investment. Section 3 describes the data and presents some summary statistics. Section 4 presents the methodology and discusses the econometric results and Section 5 concludes.

This study has examined two related but different questions about the links between financial intermediation and domestic investment. The first question is whether higher financial development induces higher domestic investment. The second is whether the structure of the financial system (bank-based vs. stock-market based) matters for domestic investment. The empirical results are informative with regard to both questions. The evidence shows that the various indicators of financial development are positively related to domestic investment. This implies that financial development facilitates domestic investment to the extent that it is accompanied by an increase in the supply of funds to investors. This suggests that as a country's financial system becomes more sophisticated, capital becomes more available and cheaper, and it is allocated more efficiently. As a result, investors find it easier to obtain the funds necessary to respond to an increase in the demand for output, which raises the level of investment. The results in this study also indicate that for a given level of financial development and controlling for country-specific factors, the structure of the financial system has no incremental impact on domestic investment. The results are inconsistent with claims that either bank-based or stock-market-based financial systems are better at promoting investment. The evidence is consistent with the view that banks and stock markets are complementary. This paper contributes to the new empirical literature on the effects of financial structure on long-run economic growth (Levine, 2002) and industry-level performance (Beck and Levine, 2002). Whereas these studies focused on long-run growth outcomes, this paper examines both short-run and long-run effects of financial intermediation on domestic investment. The evidence in this paper sheds some light on the debate on the comparative merits of banks vs. stock markets in stimulating investment. Given the wide diversity in the levels of economic development, investment rates, and financial structure across the countries in the sample used in this study, it is not likely that the results are driven by some sampling bias. Moreover, the analysis with panel data is a significant improvement compared to the traditional research on the relationship between financial structure and real economic activity, which has typically relied on case studies on industrialized countries. The results in this paper are informative with regard to policies aimed at boosting domestic investment. The evidence suggests that it may not be useful to expend resources in trying to promote a particular type of financial structure. This is particularly relevant for less-developed countries that are most resource-constrained. Instead, countries will benefit from reducing policy uncertainty, strengthening the regulatory framework, and enforcing creditor and investor rights. This will create an environment that facilitates the development of banks as well as stock markets, which will stimulate domestic investment.