Description:
Using a unique sample of net domestic
product data for districts in India, I investigate the
connection between banking sector development, human
capital, and economic growth at the sub-national level.
Using disaggregate data avoids many of the omitted variable
problems that plague cross-country studies of the
finance-growth connection and facilitates an instrumentation
strategy. The findings show that the growth of many
districts in India is financially constrained due to lack of
banking sector development, and that the relationship
between finance and growth may be non-linear. For the
districts in the sample, moving from the 75th percentile of
credit/net domestic product to the 25th percentile implies
an average loss of 4 percent in growth over the 1990s. This
indicates that the gains from increased banking sector
outreach may be large. The analysis shows that human capital
deepening can reduce the effect of the financial constraint
and help decouple growth from financial development. In a
district at the 25th literacy percentile, the implied growth
loss due to a constrained banking sector is twice as large
as in a district at the 75th literacy percentile. Thus,
higher levels of human capital may activate alternative
growth and production channels that are less finance intensive.