The Relationship Between Stock Market Development And The Opacity Index

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between stock market development and the Opacity Index for 2005/2006, 2007/2008, and 2009. The role of financial institutions in promoting economic growth and development is well established. The specific role of the stock market in economic growth and development is to provide capital to entrepreneurs and growing companies and to direct capital to companies that provide the highest rate of return. The Opacity Index is a measure of transparency for an economy and measures the degree of transparency in an economy. We find a statistically significant relationship between the Opacity Index and the ratio of stock market capitalization divided by GDP for a sample of 45 countries for which the Opacity Index is provided.