Stock markets, banks and economic growth in the UK, 1850–1913

Abstract

This article shows that neither stock markets nor commercial banks had a significant impact on the UK's economic growth from 1850 to 1913. These results are based on a new dataset on paid-in capital of securities listed on the UK's stock exchanges, which is analysed using a vector autoregression with time-varying parameters. Econometric results also indicate that the growth of the banking sector and the capital markets was, to a significant extent, driven by factors other than domestic economic growth.