Stock Market Development and Economic Growth: Empirical Evidence from Nepal

This study examines the relationship between stock market development and economic growth in Nepal by employing autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model with bound testing procedures. The study period covers annual time series data from 1994 to 2019. Indicators of the stock market development used are size, depth and efficiency represented by market capitalization as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), total value of shares traded as a percentage of GDP and total shares traded as a percentage of market capitalization, respectively. Following high correlations among these indicators, an aggregated index is constructed and used in the study. Real GDP per capita growth is taken as an economic growth indicator. The results suggest that there exists a long-run uni-directional causality relationship running from stock market development index to economic growth. Stock market size and liquidity are significant contributors, showing that stock market is able to mobilize capital and diversify risks with increased easiness in trading of stocks. The control variable market inflation shows no significant impact on either of the examined primary variables.