This article investigates whether the level of institutional development affects the link between financial development and economic growth. Using a range of cross-sectional and panel approaches we find that the positive effect of banking development on growth is reduced as the level of institutions (e.g. rule of law, lack of corruption) increases. We do not, however, find a similar result when we examine the joint effect of institutional level and stock market development on economic growth. We attribute these results to the ability of banks to perform functions similar to those provided by well-operating institutions, whereas stock markets do not perform such comparable functions.
Using state-level data from 1980-2010 we examine whether economic freedom, as measured by the Economic Freedom of North America Index, has had any impact in increasing or decreasing the ratio of median income for black households to the median income of white households. To our knowledge, there has been no research on racial income disparities and the role that economic freedom might have in alleviating or exacerbating the problem. We find evidence that economic freedom is associated with an increase in the racial income gap.
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