A large body of evidence links financial development to economic growth, yet the channels through which inflation affects this relationship and its stability have been less thoroughly explored. We take an econometric and graphical approach to analyzing these channels, and find that higher levels of financial development, combined with low inflation, are related to higher rates of economic growth, especially in developing countries, but that financial development loses much of its explanatory power in the presence of high inflation. In particular, small increases in the price level seem able to wipe out relatively large efficiency gains achieved through financial deepening when the annual rate of inflation lies between 4 and 19 percent, whereas the operation of the finance-growth link is less affected by higher inflation rates. Growth is generally much lower, however, in such high inflation settings where financial development is typically repressed.
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Paper provided by Department of Economics, Vanderbilt University in its series Working Papers with number
0916.
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.
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