The impact of institutions on financial development: Evidence from East Asian countries

This paper examines the impact of institutions on regional financial development using a panel data model of 11 East Asian countries during 1996-2017. It divides the institutional factors into six economic factors and six legal-political factors. The analysis demonstrates that the legal-political institutional factors have a stronger impact on financial development than the economic institutional factors in East Asia. Improvement in institutional quality such as fiscal freedom, business freedom, control of corruption, government effectiveness, regulatory quality and rule of law can promote financial development. Improvements of these institutional factors facilitate the ability of enterprises to allocate resources and improve the strength of business operations, thereby reducing transaction costs and making the financial operating environment fairer and more efficient. With the improvement of institutional factors, financial development will have more opportunities to develop better. Institutional impacts are more pronounced in the financial development in Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Myanmar than in the other countries such as China, Japan, Korea and Singapore.