What is the relationship between financial development, political instability, trade openness and economic growth and how does it change over time? This paper examines these links using a new econometric approach and unique data set. In this paper, we apply the logistic smooth transition model (LST) to annual data for Brazil from 1890 to 2003. The main finding is that financial development has a time-varying effect on economic growth, which depends significantly on (jointly estimated) trade openness thresholds. In addition, political instability displays a negative effect on growth whereas trade openness a positive one. Finally, our estimates show that in 56% of the years in which financial development has a ‘below the mean’ effect, we find that trade openness experiences a substantial ‘above the mean’ change.

金融发展、政治不稳定、贸易开放和经济增长之间的关系是什么？随着时间的推移，这种关系如何变化？本文使用一种新的计量经济学方法和独特的数据集来检验这些联系。在本文中，我们将逻辑平滑过渡模型 (LST) 应用于巴西从 1890 年到 2003 年的年度数据。主要发现是金融发展对经济增长具有时变效应，这在很大程度上取决于（联合估计的）贸易开放门槛。此外，政治不稳定对增长产生负面影响，而贸易开放则产生积极影响。最后，我们的估计表明，在金融发展产生“低于平均水平”效应的 56% 的年份中，我们发现贸易开放度经历了显着的“高于平均水平”变化。