Global Journal of Management and Business Research, B: Economics and Commerce, Volume 20 Issue 1

The results show us that finance, growth, and the quality of institutions are correlated variables. The idea that countries with better institutions are also those with the highest levels of GDP per capita, a more efficient financial sector. and our composite indicator of financial development is involved in confirming these results, precisely as it is highly correlated with the variables mentioned above. This gives relevance to this indicator about its ability to reveal the economic, institutional, and financial situation of the 97 countries in our sample. Besides, the analysis of the data tells us once again that the OECD developed countries and some countries in Asia and South America, are a group of leading countries, characterized by high capita GDP, a level of inflation relatively correct, an institutional framework conducive to the development of financial activities. And then there is a group of countries, most of which are less economically and financially developed, some of which show encouraging signs and others, including many African countries, which are experiencing real difficulties and must make significant efforts to improve their institutions, to hope for stronger growth and more improved indicators of financial development. By analyzing our results (taking the most recent date, 2016), we find that out of the 97 countries in our sample, 38 of them have an above-average index of 28.12, and symmetrically 59 countries are classified as having a lower than the sample average. When we look closer, the ranking shows that the leading countries are Hong Kong, followed by Luxembourg, Japan, Switzerland, China, Denmark with indices of 113.38 respectively; 83.61; 77.83; 77.35; 64.43; 60.58; 77.73; 73.04 show top-notch performance according to our calculations, and whose indices indicate a deviation from the average of the sample The United States (53.57) occupies the 12th position, France (42.72) is in 21st position. Generally, in these countries, agents do not experience a financial constraint framework in these financial systems. Financial intermediation is effective, and firms and households can finance their projects. These systems ful fill the six main financial functions: the legal and regulatory framework, risk-sharing, and investment monitoring are conducive to economic agents; the information available is sufficient for decision making. Among the countries of the African continent, it can be seen that South Africa (42.94), Morocco (34.71), Cape Verde (34.04), Tunisia (32.90) are the best performing in Africa with higher indices than the average. On the other hand, the second half of the classification, that is, the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, massively occupy its lower extremity. With exceptions such as Argentina (7.76), Pakistan (12.23) at the level of the last 20 positions are only African countries (South of Sahara). Malawi (6.00), Sierra Leone (5.11), Chad (4.44), Sudan (4.30), and Congo Democratic Republic (2.80) have the five least developed and worst-performing financial systems in our sample. Firms and households in these countries face significant financial constraints. Economic agents do not operate within an institutional (economic and political) framework sufficiently conducive to business, and governments do not provide effective law enforcement, property, and regulations for framework good economic practice. For the WAEMU countries of the zone, namely Togo (18.73), Senegal (16.51), Burkina Faso (12.85), Benin (12.47, Ivory Coast (11.78), Mali (10.97), Niger (7.85), Guinea-Bissau (7.17). They are characterized by a lower-than-average index of the sample indices, which indicates a significant delay in the financial system of the countries in this WAEMU economic zone, which is manifested by inadequacies in both purely financial indicators, as well as institutional indicators. b) The results of the econometric analysis i. Estimation in dynamic panel (GMM) a. The WAEMU zone Our results, obtained after the use of Stata software (Version Stata 12) are shown in the following table: © 20 20 Global Journals 30 Global Journal of Management and Business Research Volume XX Issue I Version I Year 2020 ( ) B Institutional Quality and Financial Development in West Africa Economic and Monetary Union