The results obtained in the above analysis produce an interesting implication when linked to the
efficiency of financial systems: despite spectacular economic growth in the Asian region, there are
significant inefficiencies in the allocation of financial resources across firms, and in the valuation of
investment opportunities. This means that the contribution of financial systems to the economic growth
in this region, if any, is more likely in the form of mobilizing savings and facilitate overall physical capital
formation, rather than in the form of improving investment efficiency. There is another pattern that is
difficult to interpret — the weaker asset growth effect in the Asian markets relative to the U.S. market. In
order to have a better perspective for understanding and interpreting the differences in the asset growth
effect between the two regions, as well as the differences across the nine Asian markets, we perform a
series of further empirical analysis.