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Abstract:
We argue that in an unreliable enforcement regime, transactions tend to become intermediated through institutions or concentrated among agents bound by some form of private enforcement. Provision of funding shifts from risk capital to debt, and from markets to institutions with long term relations. When minority investors' rights are poorly protected, the ability of firms to raise equity capital is impaired, leading to less finance for new risky ventures. More generally, fewer firms will be financed with outside equity, resulting in a low capitalisation relative to GNP and a predominance of internal (unlisted) equity and bank lending over traded securities. We report some supporting evidence on a small set of countries on the correlation between investor protection and development of security markets. We use existing measures of investor protection and corruption, as well as a price measure, the premium on voting stock, which is related to the control premium. In countries where the voting premium is large, corporate financing is dominated by bank lending and equity markets are much smaller. The other indicators are also consistent with our hypothesis, although the sample size is limited.

Abstract:
The organization of the paper is simple. We start by examining the real effects of anticipated inflation in an economy that has fully adapted to inflation. In particular, in this economy: (i) public institutions are fully attuned to inflation (or inflation proof), (ii) the same is true of private institutions, (iii) current and future inflation is fully reflected in inherited contracts, and (iv) future inflation is fully reflected in contracts for the future. After we have discussed the effects of anticipated inflation in this environment, we examine the real effects of inflation that arise as the assumptions (i) to (iv) are dropped one after the other. The effects cumulate in the sense that those present in the economy that has fully adapted to inflation are also present in economies with non-inflation proof institutions, and so on.