This paper reviews, appraises, and critiques theoretical and empirical research on the connections between the operation of the financial system and economic growth. While subject to ample qualifications and countervailing views, the preponderance of evidence suggests that both financial intermediaries and markets matter for growth and that reverse causality alone is not driving this relationship. Furthermore, theory and evidence imply that better developed financial systems ease external financing constraints facing firms, which illuminates one mechanism through which financial development influences economic growth. The paper highlights many areas needing additional research.

The battle between proponents of the Efficient Markets Hypothesis and champions of behavioral finance has never been more pitched, and little consensus exists as to which side is winning or the implications for investment management and consulting. In this article, I review the case for and against the Efficient Markets Hypothesis and describe a new framework—the Adaptive Markets Hypothesis—in which the traditional models of modern financial economics can coexist alongside behavioral models in an intellectually consistent manner. Based on evolutionary principles, the Adaptive Markets Hypothesis implies that the degree of market efficiency is related to environmental factors characterizing market ecology such as the number of competitors in the market, the magnitude of profit opportunities available, and the adaptability of the market participants. Many of the examples that behavioralists cite as violations of rationality that are inconsistent with market efficiency—loss aversion, overconfidence, overreaction, mental accounting, and other behavioral biases—are, in fact, consistent with an evolutionary model of individuals adapting to a changing environment via simple heuristics. Despite the qualitative nature of this new paradigm, I show that the Adaptive Markets Hypothesis yields a number of surprisingly concrete applications for both investment managers and consultants.

This paper provides a survey of the recent progress in the literature of financial development and economic growth. The survey highlights that most empirical studies focus on either testing the role of financial development in stimulating economic growth or examining the direction of causality between these two variables. Although the positive role of finance on growth has become a stylized fact, there are some methodological reservations about the results from these empirical studies. Several key issues unresolved in the literature are highlighted. The paper also points to several directions for future research.

Stevenson, as well as discussants Mari Sako and David Scharfstein for thoughtful comments on previous drafts. We alone are responsible for errors, oversights and faulty reasoning. Direct correspondence to:

Representative agent models including the CAPM are inconsistent with existing empirical evidence for steep demand curves for individual stocks. This paper resolves the issue by proposing that stock prices are instead set by two separate classes of investors. The market portfolio is priced by individual investors based on their collective risk aversion. Individual investors also delegate part of their wealth to active money managers who use that wealth to price stocks in the cross-section. In equilibrium the fee charged by active managers has to equal the before-fee alpha they earn. This produces wide pricing bounds for individual stocks and can account for several empirically observed puzzles such as the magnitude of the S&P 500 index premium.

D uring the last 30 years, the fi nancial services sector has grown enormously. This growth is apparent whether one measures the fi nancial sector by its share of GDP, by the quantity of fi nancial assets, by employment, or by average wages. At its peak in 2006, the fi nancial services sector contributed 8.3 percent to US GDP, compared to 4.9 percent in 1980 and 2.8 percent in 1950. The contribution to GDP is measured by the US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) as value-added, which can be calculated either as fi nancial sector revenues minus nonwage inputs, or equivalently as profi ts plus compensation. Figure 1, following the methodology of Philippon (2012) and constructed from a variety of historical sources, shows that that the fi nancial sector share of GDP increased at a faster rate since 1980 (13 basis points of GDP per annum) than it did in the prior 30 years (7 basis points of GDP per annum).1 The growth of fi nancial services since 1980 accounted for more than a quarter of the growth of the services sector as a whole. Figure 1 shows 1 Online Appendix Table 1, which is available with this article at

and the MIT Industrial Performance Center for thoughtful comments on previous drafts. We alone are responsible for errors, oversights and faulty reasoning.

The empirical literature on finance and development suggests that countries with better developed financial systems experience faster economic growth. Financial development- as captured by size, depth, efficiency and reach of financial systems-varies sharply around the world, with large differences among countries at similar levels of income. This paper argues that governments play an important role in building effective financial systems and discusses different policy options to make finance work for development.

With the move to defined-contribution plans, we, the financial services industry, are asking individuals to make complex financial management decisions that they have not had to make in the past and that, for the most part, they are not adequately prepared to make. In addition, I believe we are presenting these decisions in formats that make them difficult for individuals—even those who are generally well educated—to resolve. I will begin this presentation with a few remarks about defined-benefit retirement plans, particularly how they went wrong and what we can learn from their flaws. I will then discuss defined-contribution plans, which have become the de facto alternative to defined-benefit plans. Unfortunately, traditional defined-contribution plans have a number of features that prevent them from being the long-term answer for employer-sponsored retirement plans. Thus, I will discuss a next-generation solution deriving from defined-contribution plans. Finally, I will discuss financial management technology and the tools available today that can be used to address and help solve the shortcomings of current retirement products.

This paper investigates the effect of capital market development on severity of economic contraction, and probability of economic downturn. The major finding is that countries with deeper capital market would face less severe business cycle output contraction, and lower chance of an economic downturn. The results hold even after controlling for other relevant variables, country specific effects, and state dependence. However, marginal effects are relatively small. Results are generated using panel estimation technique with panel data from 44 countries covering the years 1975 through 2004.