One of the central concerns in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) has been the reduction of poverty and inequality so prevalent in the continent. Using large world samples, the literature has found that financial development increases economic growth, increases the income of the poor, and reduces inequality. This paper studies the effects of financial development on the whole distribution of income in LAC. We find that the income of the poorest quintile has not been affected by expansion in the financial system. However, we do find that financial development has had a disproportionate positive effect on the incomes of the second, third and fourth quintiles. We also find some evidence for the Greenwood-Jovanovic (1991) hypothesis that this positive effect only begins after a country crosses a certain economic development threshold.
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.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in its series IZA Discussion Papers with number
3796.
Find related papers by JEL classification: O11 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development O16 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Financial Markets; Saving and Capital Investment G00 - Financial Economics - - General - - - General
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
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.:
Levine, Ross, 2005.
"Finance and Growth: Theory and Evidence,"
Handbook of Economic Growth,
in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 12, pages 865-934
Elsevier.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions: