Hydraulic Origins of Finance: Irrigation and Firm Access to Credit
研究发现历史上灌溉强度高的地区，企业如今面临更弱的产权保护、更低的金融机构信任和更高的信贷障碍，尤其影响私营、非关联和高女性所有权的企业。
This paper investigates how historically intensive irrigation systems influenced enduring institutional and cultural traits that constrain firms’ access to finance. Combining geo-climatic measures of irrigation potential with firm-level data from 174 ethnic regions across 146 countries, we find that historically irrigated societies are characterised by weaker property rights, lower trust in financial institutions, and greater reliance on internal financing. Firms in these regions report more severe financial obstacles and higher rejection rates from banks. Implementing a spatial regression discontinuity design around the Lower Rhine and using irrigation potential as an instrument, we provide evidence consistent with a long-term influence of historical irrigation on modern credit frictions. The effects are most evident among privately owned domestic firms, unaffiliated firms, and those with higher female ownership. These findings indicate that ancient irrigation infrastructure is associated with persistent imprints on contemporary financial markets.