Financial Development, Growth, and Inequality: The Role of Institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean

This publication explores the relationships between institutions, financial development, and income inequality. It assesses the extent of reforms that can promote financial development and argues that institutional improvements capable of increasing financial development can simultaneously mitigate income inequality. This work, focusing on the Latin American and Caribbean region, uses a broad set of measures of financial development, financial institutions, and capital markets. It employs a comprehensive set of inequality indicators and income definitions, as well an econometric model of the financial possibility frontier, to demonstrate that institutions contributing to financial development also help reduce income inequality.