Study title

The aim of this project is to examine the role of law in economic development in the‘rising powers’ of China, Russia, India and Brazil. The work will analyse how far the quality of legal and other formal institutions has affected financial development and economic growth in these countries, and whether reliance on informal institutions poses an obstacle to their future growth. The project will adopt an inter-disciplinary, multi-methods approach, combining quantitative analysis of the extent and nature of correlations between legal and financial development, with qualitative, fieldwork-based research aimed at building up a detailed, micro-institutional account of the perceptions and strategies of actors involved in legal and financial reforms. It will make use of legal and financial datasets to carry out time-series and panel data analysis capable of specifying causal links between legal institutions and economic development. The fieldwork will focus on the role played in each country by the banking sector and capital markets as sources of finance for firms, and on how government reconciles or combines its continuing role as owner of financial and industrial enterprise with its emerging role as a regulator of banks and securities markets.