This paper presents both the time-series and cross-country evidence on the growth of global equity markets and attempts to shed some light on the sources of equity market growth. Using data on 33 countries, I find that development of financial intermediaries and openness to trade are positively associated with the size and activity of equity markets, while government consumption is negatively associated with equity market activity and liquidity. Under the stochastic frontier modeling approach, the legal and institutional characteristics of a country are assumed to affect its equity market development through the channel of institutional efficiency. I show that there are wide differences in institutional efficiency across countries and over time and, Canada, the United States and Singapore possess the most investor-friendly institutional framework that enhances stock market development. My most striking finding is that improvements in institutional efficiency, and changes in investor sentiment, appear to be the driving force behind the phenomenal expansion of global equity markets over the past two decades.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Rafael La porta & Florencio Lopez-De-Silanes & Andrei Shleifer & Robert Vishny, 2002.
"Investor Protection and Corporate Valuation,"
Journal of Finance,
American Finance Association, vol. 57(3), pages 1147-1170, 06.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
RAFAEL LaPORTA & FLORENCIO LOPEZ-de-SILANES & ANDREI SHLEIFER & ROBERT W. VISHNY, .
"Legal Determinants of External Finance,","
CRSP working papers
324, Center for Research in Security Prices, Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago.
La Porta, Rafael & Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes & Andrei Shleifer & Robert W. Vishny, 1997.
" Legal Determinants of External Finance,"
Journal of Finance,
American Finance Association, vol. 52(3), pages 1131-50, July.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Rafael La Porta & Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes & Andrei Shleifer & Robert W. Vishny, 1998.
"Law and Finance,"
Journal of Political Economy,
University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(6), pages 1113-1155, December.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
Rafael La Porta & Florencio Lopez-de-Silane & Andrei Shleifer & Robert W. Vishny, 1996.
"Law and Finance,"
NBER Working Papers
5661, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Thorsten Beck & Asli Demirguc-Kunt & Ross Levine, 2002.
"Law, Endowment, and Finance,"
NBER Working Papers
9089, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)