Institutions and Financial Development: Evidence from International Migrants in the United States
通过分析美国移民的金融行为，发现来自产权保护更有效国家的移民更可能在美国持有股票，且母国制度的影响在生命早期形成，并在同国移民聚集的大都市区被放大。
We investigate the impact of institutions on financial development by analyzing the financial behavior of immigrants in the United States. We find that immigrants from countries with institutions that more effectively protect private property are more likely to own stock in the United States. The effect of home-country institutions is persistent and absorbed early in life. The impact of institutions is amplified for immigrants who live in metropolitan areas with many other immigrants from the same country. These findings are robust to alternative measures of institutional effectiveness and to various methods of controlling for unobserved individual characteristics, including specifications with country fixed effects. Copyright by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.