Financial Development and Economic Growth in the CEPGL Region: Evidence Based on Panel Data

This paper contributes to the huge debate on the relationship between financial development and the economic growth. The evidence is applied to the CEPGL (Communaute Economique des Pays des Grands Lacs) region. Previous studies have concluded either to the absence of connection between the two spheres, to a unidirectional or bidirectional relationship, or to a differentiated connection depending on the economic status of development of the country. The research design applied in this research has been inspired by the reality of the region by running an Error Correction Model for each country and a fixed effects model on panel data for the whole region. Therefore, we estimated econometric models from a series of macroeconomic data relating to the depth, and the accessibility of the financial system. The data used in this study range from 1976 to 2013. Insights from this study show that the financial system of the region is extremely underdeveloped, a weak connection between the financial and the economic sphere, in addition to an ambivalent sense of causality.