Kul B. Luintel

Financial Structure Matters

A seemingly uncomfortable weight of evidence indicates that financial structure is irrelevant for economic growth, although the common belief is that the institutional structure of a financial system should matter. Analysing a novel dataset covering 69 countries over 1989–2011 in a Bayesian framework, Kul B. Luintel and his co-authors find that financial structure – a market-based system – is relevant, with sizable economic effects for high-income countries, thus providing a counter example to the above weight of evidence. In another recent paper, Mr Luintel examines R&D, innovations, spillovers and scale effects in a panel of emerging countries and finds convincing evidence of scale effects in emerging countries. This implies that government R&D policies are potent for long-run growth in emerging countries – a finding that is in sharp contrast to the one reported vis-à-vis industrialised countries (e.g., Jones, 1995). He also finds that the observed growth rates of emerging economies appear in transition, hence their growth rates may recede with the passage of time.

Mr Luintel has extensive managerial and leadership experience in higher education. During his visit to CESifo, he will pursue research on Credit Threshold, Systemic Risk and Economic Growth.

Kul Luintel is an applied economist whose research is motivated by policy issues. His general research interests are macro, finance and growth. Specifically, he has published studies such as: "Financial Development, Financial Structure and Economic Growth"; "Financial Constraints, Economic Growth and the Productivity of Capital"; "The Dynamics of Innovation and Endogenous Growth"; "R&D, Productivity and Knowledge Diffusion"; "Fiscal Solvency"; "Fiscal Integration in the EU"; "Exchange Rates"; "Exogeneity of Money"; "Spot and Forward Market Efficiency"; "Fisher Relationship" and "Executive Stock Options". His work has appeared in journals including The Review of Economics and Statistics, The Economic Journal, Journal of Money Credit and Banking, Economica, Journal of Development Economics, Canadian Journal of Economics, Journal of Applied Econometrics, Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organization, Journal of International Money and Finance, Economics Letters, Journal of Productivity Analysis.

Kul Luintel is Professor of Economics at Cardiff Business School and was Head of the Economics Department from 2012 to 2015. He received an MPhil (1990) and PhD (1993) from the University of Glasgow. Prior to joining academia, he was a Central Banker in Nepal.