Useful Charts and Graphs from the WDR 2002

Figure 4.1 - Financial system development across income groups

As economies develop, the needs of the users and the providers of financial services change. Informal finance becomes less important, and self-financed capital investment gives way first to bank-intermediated debt finance and later to the emergence of capital markets, as additional instruments for raising external funds (figure 4.1). Although banks dominate most formal financial systems, the relative importance of the stock market tends to increase with the level of development (box 4.2). Far more finance is raised from bank loans, however, than from selling equity, even in industrial countries. - WDR 2002, page 77