More Bankers, More Growth? Evidence from OECD Countries

We re-examine empirically the finance-growth relationship. We argue that financial deepening should not only be assessed via the familiar measures of financial activity output-the volume of credit-but also through its inputs-for example, the relative number of employees in the financial industry-or the efficiency of the financial-intermediation process. The latter is measured in this paper by the ratio of credit volume to the number of financial-sector employees. We compare these measures using the econometric approach recommended by Roodman (2009). Overall, we fail to find a positive relationship between financial deepening and economic growth in OECD countries over the last 40 years.