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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the current status of library bookbinding in Greece.

Two surveys were circulated among libraries and bookbinders. They aimed at determining the extent of use of bookbinding, the necessary characteristics of durable library bookbinding according to the respondents’ opinions and the relationship between bookbinders and libraries.

The gathered data reflect the attitudes of Greek librarians and bookbinders and outline the current status of library bookbinding in Greece. They showed that bookbinding is extensively used as part of the preservation strategy for the majority of the Greek libraries. Most libraries resort to outsourcing. The specifications set by libraries are usually minimal, and it is left to the bookbinders to recommend the best solutions. Both librarians and binders emphasised openability and durability as the most important qualities of the bound volumes and quoted several relevant technical details. A model library binding technique is suggested in this study.

Such an investigation has never been attempted before. This research can be useful to the Greek Libraries Central Administration and also to the whole Greek library community for the improvement of the current situation, and may help towards the development of a national standard. It may also be useful for the international library community as a case study, presenting the situation in Greece.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the macroeconomic determinants of stock market development in South Africa during the period 1975–2015. Specifically, it examines the impact of banking sector development, economic growth, inflation rate, real interest rate and trade openness on the development of the South African stock market.

The author employs autoregressive distributed lag bounds testing procedure that allows the author to empirically investigate both the short- and long-run relationships between the stock market development and its determinants in the context of South Africa. In addition, the author also conducts a sensitivity analysis by accounting for the presence of structural breaks in the underlying series to check for the robustness of the estimation.

This paper confirms the findings by other studies that banking sector development and economic growth promote stock market development, while inflation rate and real interest rate inhibit stock market development. In addition, this paper finds an interesting result in the fact that trade openness has a negative impact on stock market development, which is different from the findings of many other studies.

Currently, while the theoretical and empirical literature presents diverse views on the relationship between each determinant and stock market development, no study has focussed on the South African stock market. Given the significant role that the South African stock market plays in Africa as measured by its market capitalisation and market capitalisation ratio, there is a need for a better understanding of the macroeconomic factors influencing its development.

This paper aims to provide a comprehensive review of the literature on the determinants of stock market development.

The paper divides the existing studies into the theoretical and empirical literature. Then, it analyses these studies in turn.

Based on the theoretical literature, the determinants of stock market development can be broadly classified into two groups: macroeconomic factors and institutional factors. The theory and the empirics predict different ways in which macroeconomic factors affect stock market development. The real income and its growth rate foster stock market development, while the banking sector, interest rate and private capital flows can foster or inhibit it. Inflation and exchange rates have adverse effects on stock market development. In terms of the institutional factors, the literature indicates that different legal origins and stock market integration can have a positive or negative impact on stock market development. In addition, factors such as legal protection of investors, corporate governance, financial liberalisation and trade openness contribute positively to the development of the stock market.

From the survey, it is imperative that policies which aim at enhancing institutional quality, financial integration, real income growth, macroeconomic stability and capital inflows, among others, will certainly promote stock market development within and across countries. Although the empirical studies have incorporated a large set of variables in their models, the theoretical studies do not contain rich models of stock market development. It is understandable that a theoretical model which contains a large set of the determinants of stock market development may be difficult to solve. However, such a model seems very appealing and will provide a unification of the existing literature.

The originality of the paper lies in the fact that it is the first to undertake a survey of the determinants of stock market development in the literature. It is hoped that this paper will spur further theoretical and empirical research on the determinants of stock market development.