Re-examining the Effect of Financial Development on Economic Growth in India: Does the Measurement of Financial Development Matter?

ABSTRACT Financial development is a multidimensional process. Over the years with the invention of various new products and services, the financial sector (both financial institutions and financial markets) across the globe has significantly evolved. The endeavor in this article is to investigate the relationship between financial development and economic growth in India for the period 1980–2017. To do so, it employs principal component analysis (PCA) to construct a financial development index, which measures the financial depth of the Indian economy. Using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) and error correction model (ECM), the study estimates a positive effect of financial development on economic growth in the long run and the short run, respectively. In addition, the empirical estimates posit a bidirectional relationship between financial development and economic growth. The uniqueness of this study lies in that it unravels a unidirectional relationship between the stock market and economic growth. The study, however, finds that appropriate liberalization policies spur economic growth in India.