General Determinants of Financial Development

Abstract

This chapter attempts to examine systematically the factors that might account for cross-country differences in financial development. It employs two modern quantitative methods, Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) and General-to-specific (Gets) approaches, to gauge the robustness of a selection of possible determinants of financial development. Special emphasis has been placed on the contributions that institutions, policy and geography may have in developing financial markets.