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Japan and the World Economy 15 (2003) 447–458 Financial systems, risk management, and entrepreneurship: historical perspectives Richard Sylla* Department of Economics, Stern School of Business, New York University, 44 W. 4th Street, New York, NY 10012, USA Received 15 January 2003; accepted 15 April 2003 Abstract Economic historians ?nd that the most successful economies of history tend to be ones that early in their modern histories developed sophisticated ?nancial systems that subsequently sustained their development and growth. Financial economists are ?nding the same association of ?nancial devel- opment and growth across a wider range of countries and levels of economic development in recent decades. This essay argues that more sophisticated ?nancial systems not only mobilize more capital and allocate capital more ef?ciently than do less developed systems. By offering more sophisticated methods of managing and reducing risks than primitive ?nancial systems, modern ?nancial systems, perhaps paradoxically, also promote higher levels of risk taking and entrepreneurship. # 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. JEL classification: G20; M13; N20; O16 Keywords: Financial systems; Risk management; Entrepreneurship; Economic growth 1. Introduction Evidence building at a rapid rate indicates that ?nancial development plays a leading role in economic growth and in accounting for the relative performance of the world’s national economies. The evidence challenges older interpretations, still held to by some, that ?nancial development is mostly a passive response to the needs of economies that began to grow more rapidly for other reasons, such as the exploitation of international trading opportunities—the globalization of trade—and technological breakthroughs in production—the industrial revolution. Instead of being a passive response to changes arising in non-?nancial sectors of economies, ?nancial development now appears to an active, instigating cause of econom