01958cas a2200253 a 4500 AALejournalIMF004866 230101c9999 xx r poo 0 0eng d 5.00 USD 9781451866476 1018-5941 BD-DhAAL BD-DhAAL Vollrath, Dietrich. Land Distribution and Financial System Development / Dietrich Vollrath, Lennart Erickson. Washington, D.C. : International Monetary Fund, 2007. 1 online resource (30 pages) IMF Working Papers <strong>Off-Campus Access:</strong> No User ID or Password Required <strong>On-Campus Access:</strong> No User ID or Password Required Electronic access restricted to authorized BRAC University faculty, staff and students Research on credit markets from developing economies, as well as work on the origin of institutions in general, has suggested that land inequality may play a role in determining financial development. In this paper we establish empirically that initial land inequality is a significant predictor of financial depth across countries, even while controlling for other predictors such as legal origin, ethnic fractionalization, and income inequality. To examine this relationship we have created a new measure of land distribution within countries that builds upon the work of Deininger and Squire (1998) by explicitly accounting for landlessness. In addition to being a significant predictor of financial development, land inequality is found to be uncorrelated with other fundamental characteristics of economies, suggesting its possible use in a wider range of research. Mode of access: Internet Erickson, Lennart. IMF Working Papers; Working Paper ; No. 2007/083 Full text available on IMF http://elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/001/2007/083/001.2007.issue-083-en.xml IMF e-Library