34 Financial cycles and crises
− facilitates the trading, diversication, and management of risk,
− produces information ex ante regarding possible investments,
− allocates capital,
− monitors investment ex post and
− exerts corporate governance after the nancing.
In a nutshell, nancial development helps to overcome frictions notably by in-
creasing the eciency of savings mobility and resource allocation to productive
sectors (Greenwood et al., 2010). Moreover, a more ecient nancial system
reduces agency costs (Aghion etal., 2005) and promotes risk- sharing in the econ-
omy (Bencivenga and Smith, 1991).
A large body of evidence documents that, on average, a bigger nancial sys-
tem is correlated with higher growth both cross