Commercial banking, insurance and economic growth in Sweden between 1830 and 1998

Abstract

We examine empirically the dynamic historical relation between commercial bank lending, insurance and economic (income) growth in Sweden using time-series data from 1830 to 1998 and performing tests for Granger causality. Because of the non-stationary nature of the time series examined the procedure of Toda and Yamamoto (1995) is used. Our results, which have accounted for possible regime changes due to different exchange rate mechanisms over time, indicate that insurance has Granger-caused economic growth and bank lending. Therefore, we conclude that insurance is an important prerequisite for stimulating economic growth and that this could have important implications for contemporary developing economies