PurposeThis paper empirically examines the impact of financial development on domestic investment in India for the period 1989–2017.Design/methodology/approachThis study employs the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach to co-integration to test the long-run relationship between financial development and domestic investment. To test the direction of causality, Toda–Yamamoto causality test and vector error correction model (VECM) Granger causality/Block Exogeneity Wald test have been employed. Investment has been measured by Gross Capital Formation. To capture various aspects of financial development in India, eight alternative indicators (both bank based and market based) have been used. With the help selected indicators, a composite index (FINDEX) of financial development has been constructed using principal component analysis (PCA).FindingsThe estimated result finds evidence in favour of positive, short-run and long-run impact of financial development on investment in the Indian economy. Both bank-based and market-based indicators are found to significantly affect the level of investment. The significant effect of efficiency-based financial development indicators (both bank based and market based) upon domestic investment implies that there is a need to implement policies that ensure the efficiency of financial intermediation.Originality/valueTo the best of authors' knowledge, not much research has been done to explore the relationship between financial development and domestic investment, especially in the case of Indian economy. This study also tries to find the impact of bank-based and market-based financial development indicators upon domestic investment to explore banks vs market issue.

The present study aims to examine the relationship between government size and economic growth in India for the period from 1961 to 2018. Additionally, as a novel contribution, the current study also attempts to examine the existence of Armey curve and estimate the threshold level of government size in India. The empirical estimation uses time series analysis and employs quadratic ordinary least squares (OLS) function and autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bound testing approach to co-integration to examine the association between the variables. The result of the study confirms a long-run significant positive impact of government size on economic growth. The present study also finds the existence of Armey curve and supports the Armey curve hypothesis in India. There exists a positive impact of government size till the threshold level, and beyond the threshold level, the coefficient of economic growth tends to decrease. The estimated optimal government size is 11.89% for India; this shows that, currently, the government spends less than the optimum amount. It implies that India operates somewhere on the positive slope of the Armey curve, and there is a scope for the government to expand its size further. However, the findings of the study also suggest that a large size of the government can be harmful for the efficiency of economic growth; thus, adjusting the government at its optimum is crucial to the economy. JEL Classification: B23, C01, C87, H11, H50, O47