Financial Globalization and Growth: The Impacts of Financial Development and Governance

Abstract

The conventional theory suggests that financial globalization encourages growth. The empirical literature, however, does not give convincing support for the theoretical benefits of financial globalization. This paper investigates the relationship between financial globalization and growth in a sample of 33 emerging market economies during the 1995-2019 period by considering both de facto and de jure measures of financial globalization. We first study the direct effect of financial globalization on growth. Then, we focus on whether the growth impact of financial globalization is conditional on the level of financial development and governance. Our two-step system GMM estimation results suggest that both financial globalization measures tend to lower growth, albeit this negative relationship mitigates after the global financial crisis. Our empirical findings also indicate that the negative growth impact of financial globalization diminishes with the high levels of financial development and governance. The results indicate that investing and upgrading the collateral environment cause higher growth and mitigate the negative growth impact of financial globalization.