Essays on financial development, financial fragility and growth.

摘要

My dissertation forms an attempt to integrate the analysis of financial fragility and financial crises in the analysis of the long run growth effects of financial development and financial openness.; In the first chapter, we establish empirically the coexistence of long run positive effects and short run negative effects of financial development on growth. Our explanation is based on a distinction between transitory and trend effects of domestic credit aggregates on economic growth. We estimate an encompassing model of long- and short-run effects. We show that a long run homogenous positive relation between financial intermediation and growth coexists with heterogenous and mostly negative short run effects. Analyzing the distribution of the short run effects, we find that such a negative short run relation can be linked to the occurrence of banking crises.; The second chapter focus on the relationships between the liquidity roles of banks, financial fragility and growth. It offers a model replicating the observed relationship between financial development and economic growth, and between the recurrence and depth of financial crises and the level of economic development. We show that middle income economies may find optimal to be exposed to liquidity crises, while poor and rich economies have more incentives to develop a fully covered banking system Therefore, middle income economies could experience banking crises in their development and, as they get richer, they eventually converge to a financially safe steady state.; The third chapter investigates whether growth and welfare can be higher in crisis prone financially open economies. In the empirical section, we show that middle-income economies experiencing boom-bust cycles grow on aver age faster over the long run. We develop an open economy growth model that rationalizes those findings. In a risky equilibrium, firms find optimal to take on risk though a currency mismatch in order to gain higher leverage and invest more. The economy will then enjoy periods of high growth and episodes of financial crises. We derive conditions under which average growth and social welfare are higher in the risky equilibrium.