Financial development and poverty reduction in emerging market economies

Abstract

Poverty reduction is one of the key challenges in the globalized world. This study investigates the relationship between financial development and poverty reduction in emerging market economies during the period 1993- 2012. The Carrión-i-Silvestre, del Barrio-Castro, and López-Bazo (2005) panel unit root test and the Basher and Westerlund (2009) cointegration test was applied considering the cross-sectional dependence and multiple structural breaks in the study period. The findings indicated that financial development, including banking sector development and stock market development, had a significant positive impact on poverty reduction in emerging market economies.

Keywords

• financial development
• poverty reduction
• multiple structural breaks
• panel cointegration