O processo de modernização dos mercados financeiros e de capitais no período compreendido entre 1964 e 2004 é analisado em detalhes, bem como sua correlação com o crescimento econômico brasileiro. São apresentadas, de forma cronológica, as ações desencadeadas durante o período de quarenta anos, pelas autoridades econômicas e pelo Congresso Nacional, para a regulamentação e normatização dos mercados financeiros e de capitais. Na seqüência se analisa de modo detalhado o comportamento da economia brasileira durante todo o período, por meio de um conjunto de estatísticas que mostram os diferentes aspectos macroeconômicos. Esta análise é complementada pelo estudo do comportamento das principais variáveis do mercado financeiro e do mercado de capitais. Discute-se, por fim, a questão teórica das relações entre o desenvolvimento financeiro e o crescimento econômico, mostrando que existe uma relação direta entre o primeiro e o segundo, na medida em que o desenvolvimento financeiro gera crescimento econômico / This dissertation analyses the process of modernization of the Brazilian financial and capital markets and its correlation to the growth and development of the Brazilian economy during the period 1964 to 2004. This dissertation also describes in a chronological fashion, for the past four decades, the policies implemented by the Brazilian economic authorities as well as the ones approved by the Brazilian Congress aimed at establishing the rules and regulations for the Brazilian financial and capital markets. Moreover, the evolution of the Brazilian economy for this period is discussed. A substantial amount of economic data is used to study the different macroeconomic changes that took place during the period under study. Finally, this dissertation elaborates and adds to the theoretical discussion: as to whether or not there is a relationship between economic growth and financial development. This dissertation shows that there is direct relationship between the two, since financial development generates economic growth

This dissertation examines three distinctive issues that concern the regulators and policy makers in the development of financial markets. It contains three stand-alone research projects within the context of law, finance and economic growth. Chapter 2 examines the dynamic relationship between banks and economic growth from the points of view of market efficiency and asset pricing theory. Publicly traded banks are broadly representative of a country???s banking sector, so that banking industry stock prices will broadly reflect the performance of a country???s banking sector. Because previous research has established that the institutional framework, as well as the aggregate size, of the banking sector can significantly affect economic growth, this chapter investigates whether the stock returns on a country???s banking sector contain information about future economic growth, and whether the specific country and institutional characteristics that affect the functioning of the banking system and market efficiency also influence this relationship. Using the data from 18 developed and 18 emerging markets, the chapter finds a significant and positive relationship between bank excess return and future economic growth in both the time-series and panel analyses. The chapter also finds that this positive relationship is significantly strengthened by the enforcement of insider trading law, by banking crises, by bank disclosure regulations and financial development, but is weakened by government ownership of banks. Chapter 3 investigates the role of bank idiosyncratic volatility in economic growth and systemic banking crises. Using the same dataset from Chapter 2, this chapter finds an ambiguous relationship between bank volatility and economic growth in the time-series studies, which suggests that the effect of bank volatility on economic growth is more country-specific. In the panel analyses, the chapter finds a negative but very weak relationship between bank volatility and future economic growth. This negative relationship is magnified by banking crises and bank disclosure standards, but is alleviated by the government ownership of banks, the enforcement of insider trading law and financial development. The chapter goes further to examine whether bank volatility leads to the occurrence of systemic banking crises, and finds that the marginal effect of bank volatility on the probability of banking crises is very weak for the sample of all markets, and this result is mainly driven by the data from the emerging markets. However, bank volatility is a significant predictor of banking crises even after being controlled for macroeconomic indicators, which implies that market forces are more powerful in promoting the soundness of the banking system in developed markets. We also find that those macroeconomic and banking risk management indicators have different impacts on the probability of banking crises for the emerging and developed markets. Therefore, caution needs to be taken in interpreting the cross-country results of the studies on banking crises. Chapter 4 studies the corporate governance issues in China, a significant developing country that has been neglected by the current law and finance literature. Incorporated with the legal environment and ownership structure of China???s listed companies, the chapter develops a simple game model to study a neglected aspect of current corporate governance literature: the expropriation arising from the mixture of weak investor protection, ownership concentration coexisting with ownership dispersion, and the absence of a controlling shareholder. The last two chapters find that government ownership undermines the positive link between bank excess return and economic growth, but alleviates the negative impact of bank volatility on growth as well. This chapter shows that government ownership is also a two-edged sword in corporate governance in China: it leads to a double-agency problem; however, the strong legal protection of State assets also increases the cost of expropriation. Using the data from 1996 to 2003, the chapter finds the empirical evidence consistent with the model. By analysing the puzzles in China???s stock market, the chapter suggests that improving the legal protection of investors is the key issue in the future development of the financial market.

My dissertation consists of empirical and theoretical essays on Microeconomic Theory and International Economics. The first chapter discusses the existence and characterization of a model that determines producer's optimal pricing and allocation rule as a preannounced markdown schedule. The mechanism focuses on pricing and operational implications of allotting scarce resources when customers are heterogeneous in their valuations and sensitivities towards availability of product. The proposed mechanism suggests that a carefully designed multistep markdown pricing could achieve optimal revenue when selling a single unit. However, to sell multiple units, monopolist should modify the implementation of markdown pricing by either hiding the number of available products or selling them via contingent contracts and upfront payments. In the second essay, we study the heterogeneity of finance and growth nexus across countries. Our paper contributes to the literature by investigating whether this impact differs across regions and types of economy. Using a rich dataset, cross-section and dynamic panel estimation results suggest that the beneficial effect of financial deepening on economic growth in fact displays measurable heterogeneity; it is generally smaller in oil exporting countries; in certain regions, such as the Middle East and North Africa (MENA); and in lower-income countries. Further analysis suggests that these differences might be driven by regulatory/supervisory characteristics and related to differing performance on financial access for a given level of depth. The third chapter analyzes contraction of exports in the aftermath of severe financial crises and tests for its heterogeneity across different industries and based on their credit conditions. It provides a theoretical framework to provide insight on why sectors are hit disproportionately during and in the aftermath of severe financial distresses, and confirms most of them with empirical estimations. The findings suggest that industries with greater reliance on outside financing and fewer shares of tangible assets experience greater contractions in export volumes in the years following a severe financial crisis. / text

Financial sector development can reduce poverty and promote economic growth by extending access to financial services in developing countries. Traditionally, banking in Sub-Saharan Africa has been conducted by state-owned banks. Although, evidence has shown that severe government involvement in the banking sector has proved to cause low profitability and inefficiency. During 2001, Uganda Commercial Bank, the dominant provider of banking experienced financial problems; as a result, the government had to privatize the bank. The aim of this thesis is therefore to investigate if the privatization prevented the banking sector from collapse and if it made the sector more competitive and outreaching. The main conclusion is that the privatization strongly prevented the banking sector from collapse. Since privatization, competition has increased sufficiently in urban areas of Uganda while rural areas have not experienced any significant increase in competition. Finally, we conclude that the outreach of banking has increased somewhat since the privatization, but it is still relatively poor.

This paper examines the correlation between credit intermediated by financial systems and economic growth in developing countries. More specifically we have studied whether well-functioning financial markets result in economic growth. We base our study on data from 53 low- and lower-middle income countries in the period 2004-2011. By comparing the two different economic theories, Schumpeter’s growth theory and Austrian business cycle theory, we have analysed our results from two different perspectives. The results from this study show an insignificant relationship between financial systems and economic growth, contradicting much of the theory and results from previous studies that have been reviewed. Other variables outside of the financial system in this study, such as economic freedom and corruption, could be a reason for the non-existent correlation between financial development and economic growth in this study.

This dissertation examines three distinctive issues that concern the regulators and policy makers in the development of financial markets. It contains three stand-alone research projects within the context of law, finance and economic growth. Chapter 2 examines the dynamic relationship between banks and economic growth from the points of view of market efficiency and asset pricing theory. Publicly traded banks are broadly representative of a country???s banking sector, so that banking industry stock prices will broadly reflect the performance of a country???s banking sector. Because previous research has established that the institutional framework, as well as the aggregate size, of the banking sector can significantly affect economic growth, this chapter investigates whether the stock returns on a country???s banking sector contain information about future economic growth, and whether the specific country and institutional characteristics that affect the functioning of the banking system and market efficiency also influence this relationship. Using the data from 18 developed and 18 emerging markets, the chapter finds a significant and positive relationship between bank excess return and future economic growth in both the time-series and panel analyses. The chapter also finds that this positive relationship is significantly strengthened by the enforcement of insider trading law, by banking crises, by bank disclosure regulations and financial development, but is weakened by government ownership of banks. Chapter 3 investigates the role of bank idiosyncratic volatility in economic growth and systemic banking crises. Using the same dataset from Chapter 2, this chapter finds an ambiguous relationship between bank volatility and economic growth in the time-series studies, which suggests that the effect of bank volatility on economic growth is more country-specific. In the panel analyses, the chapter finds a negative but very weak relationship between bank volatility and future economic growth. This negative relationship is magnified by banking crises and bank disclosure standards, but is alleviated by the government ownership of banks, the enforcement of insider trading law and financial development. The chapter goes further to examine whether bank volatility leads to the occurrence of systemic banking crises, and finds that the marginal effect of bank volatility on the probability of banking crises is very weak for the sample of all markets, and this result is mainly driven by the data from the emerging markets. However, bank volatility is a significant predictor of banking crises even after being controlled for macroeconomic indicators, which implies that market forces are more powerful in promoting the soundness of the banking system in developed markets. We also find that those macroeconomic and banking risk management indicators have different impacts on the probability of banking crises for the emerging and developed markets. Therefore, caution needs to be taken in interpreting the cross-country results of the studies on banking crises. Chapter 4 studies the corporate governance issues in China, a significant developing country that has been neglected by the current law and finance literature. Incorporated with the legal environment and ownership structure of China???s listed companies, the chapter develops a simple game model to study a neglected aspect of current corporate governance literature: the expropriation arising from the mixture of weak investor protection, ownership concentration coexisting with ownership dispersion, and the absence of a controlling shareholder. The last two chapters find that government ownership undermines the positive link between bank excess return and economic growth, but alleviates the negative impact of bank volatility on growth as well. This chapter shows that government ownership is also a two-edged sword in corporate governance in China: it leads to a double-agency problem; however, the strong legal protection of State assets also increases the cost of expropriation. Using the data from 1996 to 2003, the chapter finds the empirical evidence consistent with the model. By analysing the puzzles in China???s stock market, the chapter suggests that improving the legal protection of investors is the key issue in the future development of the financial market.

The aim of this work is to examine the impact of financial development, financial constraints and capital control on stocks market returns. The research looks into stock returns of emerging and developed economies over the period of 2004-2016 by using data, both by firm-level and country level, from 88 developed and emerging countries. Furthermore, the KZ, WW and SA indexes were used to classified as being financially constrained and financially unconstrained and the level of capital control of each group of countries is interacted with financial constraints. We aim to determine the relationship between the variables used as the measurement (depth, access, efficiency and stability) of financial development of a country, the financial constraint and capital control and their relationship to the stock market returns. Previous research focusing on stock market returns have dealt with different influences affecting the stock returns; however, the literature examining the influence of capital control on stock return is scarce. Our results suggest that the extended Fama and French three-factor model including macroeconomic and financial development variables and considering the presence of financial constraints help in the understanding in their impact on asset pricing for emerging and developed countries alike. / Este trabalho tem por objetivo examinar o impacto do desenvolvimento financeiro, das restrições financeiras e do controle de capital no retorno das ações. A pesquisa analisa o retorno das ações dos países emergentes e desenvolvidos durante o período de 2004-2016 através de uma base de dados de 88 países, emergentes e desenvolvidos, com dados tanto ao nível da firma como ao nível do país. Além disso, os índices KZ, WW e SA são usados para classificar as empresas como restritas e não restritas financeiramente, e utiliza-se também as interações do nível de controle de capital com as restrições financeiras. O objetivo é determinar a relação entre as variáveis de desenvolvimento financeiro do país (profundidade, acesso, eficiência e estabilidade), as restrições financeiras e o controle de capital com o retorno de mercado das ações. As pesquisas anteriores acerca do tema retorno lidaram com diferentes fatores que afetam o retorno de ações; entretanto, estudos envolvendo a influência do controle de capital no retorno de ações ainda são escassos Nossos resultados sugerem que um modelo composto coletivamente pelo modelo de três fatores de Fama e French e variáveis macroeconômicas e de desenvolvimento financeiro, considerando ao mesmo tempo restrições financeiras, ajuda na melhor compreensão do impacto de ditas variáveis no preço de ativos em países emergentes e desenvolvidos.

O processo de modernização dos mercados financeiros e de capitais no período compreendido entre 1964 e 2004 é analisado em detalhes, bem como sua correlação com o crescimento econômico brasileiro. São apresentadas, de forma cronológica, as ações desencadeadas durante o período de quarenta anos, pelas autoridades econômicas e pelo Congresso Nacional, para a regulamentação e normatização dos mercados financeiros e de capitais. Na seqüência se analisa de modo detalhado o comportamento da economia brasileira durante todo o período, por meio de um conjunto de estatísticas que mostram os diferentes aspectos macroeconômicos. Esta análise é complementada pelo estudo do comportamento das principais variáveis do mercado financeiro e do mercado de capitais. Discute-se, por fim, a questão teórica das relações entre o desenvolvimento financeiro e o crescimento econômico, mostrando que existe uma relação direta entre o primeiro e o segundo, na medida em que o desenvolvimento financeiro gera crescimento econômico / This dissertation analyses the process of modernization of the Brazilian financial and capital markets and its correlation to the growth and development of the Brazilian economy during the period 1964 to 2004. This dissertation also describes in a chronological fashion, for the past four decades, the policies implemented by the Brazilian economic authorities as well as the ones approved by the Brazilian Congress aimed at establishing the rules and regulations for the Brazilian financial and capital markets. Moreover, the evolution of the Brazilian economy for this period is discussed. A substantial amount of economic data is used to study the different macroeconomic changes that took place during the period under study. Finally, this dissertation elaborates and adds to the theoretical discussion: as to whether or not there is a relationship between economic growth and financial development. This dissertation shows that there is direct relationship between the two, since financial development generates economic growth

Ces deux dernières décennies ont été marquées par une montée spectaculaire des marchés boursiers des pays en développement. Cette augmentation de l’activité boursière a favorisé, selon certains auteurs, l’amélioration des performances économiques de quelques pays dits émergents. Cependant, les pays africains peinent encore à bénéficier des avantages liés à l’activité boursière, compte tenu de l’étroitesse,de la faible liquidité et de l’inefficience de leurs marchés boursiers. Les marchés boursiers de ces pays accusent un retard manifeste par rapport aux pays en développement des autres continents. Cette thèse examine les facteurs qui expliquent le niveau de développement des marchés boursiers des pays en développement en général, et des pays africains en particulier à partir d’un échantillon de 106 pays. L’analyse empirique est articulée autour des tests statistiques et économétriques. Les résultats montrent que le capital social mesuré par la confiance influence considérablement le développement des marchés boursiers dans les pays en développement. Cette confiance, puisqu’elle est très faible en Afrique, explique le retard des marchés boursiers africains par rapport aux marchés des pays en développement des autres continents. Par ailleurs, la faiblesse de la confiance en Afrique est due à l’hétérogénéité des populations caractérisées par une forte fragmentation ethnique, linguistique et religieuse. Les résultats montrent également que le développement des nouvelles technologies de l’information et de la communication influence positivement le développement des marchés boursiers à travers la réduction des coûts des transactions. Enfin, le développement des marchés boursiers africains est également compromis par leur ouverture précoce au reste du monde. En effet, l’ouverture financière affecte négativement l’activité boursière dans ces pays. Pour favoriser l’essor des bourses africaines, il est donc nécessaire de prendre un certain nombre de mesures. Il s’agit d’améliorer l’environnement institutionnel de manière à mieux protéger les propriétaires de capitaux afin de réduire l’effet de la faiblesse de la confiance ; de mettre en œuvre une politique qui favorise le brassage socioculturel entre les populations ; d’œuvrer pour augmenter le nombre d’entreprises cotées sur les marchés boursiers à travers l’ouverture au privé du capital des sociétés étatiques par le biais de la bourse ainsi que des mesures incitatives vis-à-vis des entreprises privées et enfin de promouvoir le développement des Nouvelles Technologies de l’Information et de la Communication. / The last two decades have seen a dramatic rise in stock markets in developing countries. This increase in marketactivity promoted, according to some authors, the improved economic performance of some so-called emergingcountries. However, African countries are still struggling to enjoy the benefits of market activity, given thenarrow, low liquidity and inefficiency of their stock markets. The stock markets of these countries clearlylagging behind compared to developing countries on other continents. This thesis examines the factors thatexplain the level of development of stock markets in developing countries in general and African countries inparticular from a sample of 106 countries. The empirical analysis is based around the statistical and econometrictests. The results show that social capital measured by the confidence greatly influences the development ofstock markets in developing countries. This confidence, since it is very low in Africa, explains the delay ofAfrican stock markets compared to markets in developing countries of other continents. Moreover, the lowconfidence in Africa is due to the heterogeneity of populations which are characterized by high ethnic, linguisticand religious fragmentation. The results also show that the development of new technologies of information andcommunication positively influences the development of stock markets by reducing transaction costs. Finally,the development of African stock markets is also compromised by their early opening to the world. Indeed,financial openness negatively affects market activity in these countries. To encourage the growth of Africanstock exchanges, it is necessary to take a number of measures. This is to improve the institutional environmentin order to better protect the owners of capital, this will reduce the effect of low confidence; to implement apolicy that promotes the socio-cultural mixing between populations; to work to increase the number of listedcompanies on the stock market through the opening to the private, the capital of state owned companies throughthe stock market and incentives vis- à-vis the private sector , and to promote development of New Technologiesof Information and Communication .

This thesis addresses the relationship between financial development and CSR performance, based on countries within the EU. The main objective of this thesis is to critically analyse and discuss the impact of financial development on CSR performance, through using ESG performance as a proxy. Additionally, this study aims at analysing the inclusion of institutional factors when examining the relationship. While the issue of how financial development impacts individual sustainability dimensions is quite well-researched, only one study is found to examine the precise relationship between financial development and ESG performance, concluding a positive linkage in Asia. No similar study is found in the region of the EU. We find the relationship to be complex, where various channels of influence are identified when examining ESG dimensions separately. To examine this relationship, we used panel data regression analysis, based on country level data for EU’s individual member states. Our findings show a complex relationship, implying that financial development has various impacts on ESG performance and varies throughout the range of financial development. This is in contrast to previous empirical research regarding the relationship, concluding an overall positive impact. This study provides no evidence that institutional factors affect the relationship between financial development and ESG performance, but argues for the importance of institutional inclusion, due to the identified influence on ESG practices through channels such as governing laws, regulations, norms and culture. Finally, financial development is concluded as an important catalyst to promote ESG performance within the EU. When suggesting any policy implementation, it is important to keep in mind that different countries within the EU may have different needs regarding the most efficient approach to increase ESG.