Revisiting Finance and Growth in Transition Economies - A Panel Causality Approach

URL des Documents de travail : http://ces.univ-paris1.fr/cesdp/cesdp2017.htmlDocuments de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 2017.22 - ISSN : 1955-611XThis article provides new evidence on the relationship between financial development and economic growth in 15 Eastern European countries between 1994 and 2014. The analysis employs a panel Granger causality framework that is based on seemingly unrelated regression systems and Wald tests with country-specific bootstrap critical values. By relying on several financial development indicators, we find that finance primarily follows GDP per capita in transition economies, supporting a demand-driven hypothesis. In contrast, financial development in the form of financial monetization and credit extension exerts in the majority of countries a negative impact on economic growth. Moreover, a strong foreign bank presence seems to positively impact growth, presumably driven by more efficiency and prudential lending behavior