Editorial: Financial market performance and growth in Africa

..... Financial market performance has frequently been cited in the economic literature as a key requirement for enhancing economic growth (Bencivenga and Smith, 1991; King and Levine, 1993; Chakraborty, 2008). The dominant understanding is that a well-functioning financial system contributes to growth by mobilizing savings and channeling them through its financial intermediaries to investors that have identified productive investment opportunities (Ndikumana, 2001; Adjasi and Biekpe, 2006). It also reduces the costs of gathering, processing, and monitoring investment information, and therefore helps reduce problems of asymmetric information that are inherent in the relationships between investors ......