Bank presence, agricultural production, and climate resilience: Evidence from India
研究印度1980年代大规模银行分支扩张计划对农业生产的影响，发现银行存在未显著改变平均产出和投入，但通过促进旱季灌溉种植增强了气候韧性。
We study the production effects of one of the largest bank branch expansion programs in history, implemented by the government of India during the 1980s. Combining policy-driven variation with newly-digitized data on bank lending and crop prices at the district-year level, we do not find evidence for a significant shift in agricultural output and inputs on average. Greater bank presence does promote resilience to climate risk, however, by attenuating the effect of lagged rainfall shocks on output. This effect operates via changes in the incidence of cropping during the dry winter season, which makes use of costly irrigation resources.