Models of digital government, rule of law, and financial innovation: Comparative evidence across developed, developing, and transition economies, with focal cases of Ukraine, the United States, and Brazil

Abstract

Type of the article: Research ArticleAbstractGlobal account ownership rose from 51 to 76 percent of adults between 2011 and 2021, much of it through digital channels, yet the depth and innovativeness of national financial systems vary sharply across economies. This study quantifies how the rule of law and the model of digital government relate to two dimensions of financial-sector development, banking-sector depth and digital financial innovation, across developed, developing, and transition economies, and tests whether digital government can substitute for institutional quality. Using a panel of 183 economies over 2000–2021 (estimation window 2003–2021) and a four-wave Global Findex panel, the analysis applies two-way fixed-effects and pooled wave-fixed-effects models with country-clustered standard errors. The rule of law is positively associated with banking-sector depth, but the association is heterogeneous: it is largest and most robust in transition economies (β = 22.17, p = 0.020) and insignificant in developing economies. Digital government, by contrast, is not significantly related to banking-sector depth (p = 0.322) yet is strongly associated with digital financial innovation, where the rule of law also matters; the e-government association is strongest for digital-payment adoption (β = 51.99, p < 0.001). In these cross-country estimates, the rule-of-law × e-government interaction is negative and significant (β = −10.69, p = 0.018), and the marginal association of the rule of law declines by almost half as digital government expands, a pattern consistent with partial substitution. These findings are robust to the 2025 revision of the governance data and to extending the sample through the 2024 Findex wave.AcknowledgmentsThis article was prepared based on the results of a study funded by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine entitled “GovTech for Ukraine: A Digital, Secure, Transparent, and Equitable State in Times of War and Post-War Reconstruction” (registration number: 0126U000544).