Too Cold, Too Hot, or Just Right? Assessing Financial Sector Development Across the Globe

Adolfo Barajas, Thorsten Beck, Era Dabla-Norris and Seyed Reza Yousefi

No 2013/081, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: This paper introduces the concept of the financial possibility frontier as a constrained optimum level of financial development to gauge the relative performance of financial systems across the globe. This frontier takes into account structural country characteristics, institutional, and macroeconomic factors that impact financial system deepening. We operationalize this framework using a benchmarking exercise, which relates the difference between the actual level of financial development and the level predicted by structural characteristics, to an array of policy variables. We also show that an overshooting of the financial system significantly beyond levels predicted by its structural fundamentals is associated with credit booms and busts.

Keywords: WP; country; market; policy; GDP (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30
Date: 2013-03-28
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (36)

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