I begin by documenting the increasing importance of capital markets, and the declining role of commercial banks, in corporate financial systems around the world. I then show that privatization programs-- particularly those involving public share offerings--have had a dramatic impact both on the ...
Another way of measuring the rise of capital markets is to examine whether their share of annual corporate financing activity has grown relative to that of other sources of funding. Security offerings by US issuers accounted for two-thirds of the global total throughout 1990-1999, that implies t...