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Why Has the US Financial Sector Grown So Much?

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  • NYU-Stern

    (NBER, CEPR)

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    Abstract

    The share of finance in U.S. GDP has been multiplied by more than three over the post-war period. I argue, using evidence and theory, that corporate finance is a key factor behind this evolution. Inside the finance industry, credit intermediation and corporate finance are more important than globalization, increased trading, or the development of mutual funds for explaining the trend. In the non financial sector, firms with low cash flows account for a growing share of total investment. I build a simple equilibrium model to capture these salient features and I use it to interpret the data. I find that corporate demand is the main contributor to the growth of the finance industry, but also that efficiency gains in finance have been important to limit credit rationing. Overall, the model can account for a bit more than half of the financial sector's growth.

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    File URL: http://www.economicdynamics.org/meetpapers/2008/paper_714.pdf
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    Bibliographic Info

    Paper provided by Society for Economic Dynamics in its series 2008 Meeting Papers with number 714.

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    Date of creation: 2008
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    Handle: RePEc:red:sed008:714

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    Postal: Society for Economic Dynamics Christian Zimmermann Economic Research Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis PO Box 442 St. Louis MO 63166-0442 USA
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    1. Greenwood, Jeremy & Sanchez, Juan M & Wang, Cheng, 2007. "Financing Development: The Role of Information Costs," Staff General Research Papers 12848, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    2. 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.
    3. Do, Quy-Toan & Levchenko, Andrei A., 2006. "Comparative advantage, demand for external finance, and financial development," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3889, The World Bank.
    4. Xavier Freixas & Jean-Charles Rochet, 1997. "Microeconomics of Banking," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262061937.
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    Cited by:
    1. Beck, Thorsten & Degryse, Hans & Kneer, Christiane, 2012. "Is more finance better? Disentangling intermediation and size effects of financial systems," Open Access publications from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven urn:hdl:123456789/353769, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.

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