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This paper aims to survey the existing literature on the causal relationship between market-based financial development and economic growth – in both developed and developing countries, highlighting the theoretical and the empirical evidence.

The paper divides financial development into bank-based and market-based financial development, and it closely reviews the international literature on the relationship between market-based financial development and economic growth.

The direction of causality between market-based financial development and economic growth varies from one country to another, depending on various country-specific characteristics, data sets and the methodology used by the researcher. On balance, there is predominant support for the supply-leading response, where the development of the market-based financial sector is expected to precede the development of the real sector.

This review differs fundamentally from previous reviews, in that it divides financial development into bank-based and market-based financial development, and it focuses closely on market-based financial development and economic growth. The majority of the previous studies on this subject failed to make such a distinction, thereby focusing mainly on the general causal relationship between the overall financial development and economic growth. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this may be the first review of its kind to survey the existing research in detail on the causal relationship between market-based financial development and economic growth, in both developed and developing countries.

The purpose of this paper was to survey the existing literature on the causal relationship between bank-based financial development and economic growth, highlighting the theoretical and empirical evidence from recent work. Although some previous studies have attempted to conduct a survey of the existing research on the finance-growth nexus, the majority of these studies have failed to distinguish between bank-based and market-based financial developments. To our knowledge, this may be the first study of its kind to survey the existing research on the causal relationship between bank-based financial development and economic growth – in both developed and developing countries.

Overall, our study shows that most of the literature reviewed in this paper either supports bidirectional causality between bank-based financial development and economic growth or reinforces the conventional supply-leading response phenomenon. Notwithstanding this outcome, the study also finds the literature in favour of a demand-following response to be increasing – in both number and substance – especially in recent years.

The paper, therefore, concludes that the causal relationship between financial development and economic growth is not clear-cut and that the notion that financial development automatically leads to economic growth is merely based on prima facie or superficial evidence.

Although some previous studies have attempted to conduct a survey of the existing research on the finance-growth nexus, the majority of these studies have failed to distinguish between bank-based and market-based financial developments. To our knowledge, this may be the first study of its kind to survey the existing research on the causal relationship between bank-based financial development and economic growth – in both developed and developing countries.