Recovering the finance-growth nexus

We show that the finance-growth nexus can be recovered by using quality adjusted measures of financial development. Specifically, we utilize three World Bank financial fragility indicators – the Z-score, a measure of liquidity and a measure of impaired loans – to construct quality adjusted measures of private credit to GDP. Our findings suggest that the finance-growth nexus is alive and kicking, as long as banks use sound lending practices to prevent the buildup of non-performing loans. We also show that our results hold in Sub-Saharan Africa — a region where the finance-growth nexus could potentially make a big difference.