11 . Legal Institutions and Financial Development

A burgeoning literature finds that financial development exerts a first-order impact on long-run economic growth. Levine and Zervos (1998) show that banking and stock market development are good predictors of economic growth.1 At the microeconomic level, Demirguc-Kunt and Maksimovic (1998) and Rajan and Zingales (1998) find that financial institutions are crucial for firm and industrial expansion. While disagreements remain, the bulk of existing evidence points to a strong finance-growth nexus. The finding that financial development influences economic growth raises critical questions, such as why do some countries have well-developed growthenhancing financial systems, while others do not? Why have some countries developed the necessary investor protection laws and contract-enforcement mechanisms to support financial institutions and markets, while others have not? The law and finance theory focuses on the role of legal institutions in explaining international differences in financial development (La Porta, Lopezde-Silanes, Shleifer, and Vishny, 1997, 1998, 2000a, henceforth LLSV). The first part of the law and finance theory holds that in countries where legal systems enforce private property rights, support private contractual arrangements, and protect the legal right of investors, savers are more willing to finance firms and financial markets flourish. In contrast, legal institutions that neither support private property rights nor facilitate private contracting inhibit corporate finance and stunt financial development. The second part of the law and finance theory emphasizes that the different legal traditions that emerged in Europe over previous centuries and were spread internationally through conquest, colonization, and imitation help explain cross-country differences in investor protection, the contracting environment,