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Recovering the finance-growth nexus

Time: 13:00-15:00 (GMT), Wednesday, 16 December 2020
Presenter: Professor Panicos Demetriades, University of Leicester
Chair: Professor Victor Murinde, SOAS University of London
Online venue: Click here to join the seminar on Microsoft Teams (For any inquiry about how to join the online seminar, please contact Dr Meng Xie: xm1@soas.ac.uk)

Abstract
We show that the finance-growth nexus can be recovered by using quality adjusted measures of financial development. Specifically, we utilize three World Bank financial fragility indicators – the Z-score, a measure of liquidity and a measure of impaired loans – to construct quality adjusted measures of private credit to GDP. Our findings suggest that the finance-growth nexus is alive and kicking, as long as banks use sound lending practices to prevent the buildup of non-performing loans. We also show that our results hold in Sub-Saharan Africa — a region where the finance-growth nexus could potentially make a big difference

Authors: Panicos O.Demetriades and Johan M. Rewilak

Presenter

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Panicos Demetriades is Professor of Financial Economics at the University of Leicester, a post he has held since March 2000.  During 2012-14, he served as Governor of the Central Bank of Cyprus and member of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank.  Professor Demetriades has published extensively in academic journals and policy portals on issues related to financial development and financial stability.  He is the author of A Diary of the Euro Crisis in Cyprus: Lessons for Bank Recovery and Resolution, Palgrave MacMillan, 2017 and Central bank independence and the future of the euro, Columbia University Press, 2019. Both books draw on his policy insights from the euro crisis.

In 2011, Professor Demetriades was elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences of the United Kingdom.  In 2019 he became a Trustee of the Money, Macro and Finance Society, a UK charity that seeks the advancement of education in the fields of monetary economics, macroeconomics and financial economics primarily within the United Kingdom. 

Professor Demetriades was born in Limassol, Cyprus where he grew up and received his primary and secondary schooling.  He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Cambridge and BA and MA degrees, also in Economics, from the University of Essex.