Search

Purpose: The aim of the paper is to examine the status and determinants of financial inclusion in India by using the recent micro-level survey data. Design/methodology/approach: The authors construct a multidimensional financial inclusion index to measure the status of financial inclusion in the selected 17 states of India. Subsequently, the authors use the probit model estimation to examine the determinants of all financial inclusion indicators. Findings: The authors find that southern and north-eastern states perform better in the overall financial inclusion index. In contrast, states like Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh lag behind. The estimated result shows that the probability of being financially included is higher among urban, richer, educated and salaried individuals. Further, the findings indicate the lower penetration of bank branches and ATMs in the rural parts of the country. Originality/value: While numerous studies have explored financial inclusion from a macro-level perspective, there exists a notable gap in the literature at the micro-level. This paper aims to address this gap and contributes to the existing literature in two ways. Firstly, it uses the recent micro-level survey data to construct a multidimensional financial inclusion index for the selected Indian states. Secondly, it examines individual-level attributes as the determining factors of financial inclusion, which has been overlooked in India. Peer review: The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-03-2023-0162 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AI and other forms of automation are causing a shift into a more capital-intensive form of capitalism. Many scholars have suggested that we can best understand this process as the cost-efficient substitution of labour by capital in routine tasks based on relative factor costs. However, this model, which has cast firms as endlessly chasing the productivity frontier, has not paid sufficient attention to cross-national divergences in technological changes. This paper builds a comparative historical case study tracing the divergent introduction of credit scoring in British and German bank branches to argue that the introduction of credit scoring was a result of a policy-led process in both countries. Increased liberalisation of financial market institutions benefitted the rise of market-led banking which fundamentally changed the business model of banks resulting in a devaluation of the services provided by branch managers. This case suggests we need to think about the role of politics and policy within our, often deterministic, models of labour-saving technological change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to evaluate commercial bank branches' performance in dynamic and competitive conditions where decision-making units (DMUs) seek a greater proportion of shared resources as it happens in the real world. By introducing the concepts of cross-shared and serial-shared resources, the authors have emphasized the role of evaluation results of past periods on branches' total efficiency. Design/methodology/approach: In this study, a new mixed-integer data envelopment analysis (MI-DEA) model has been proposed to evaluate the performance of a dynamic network in the presence of cross-shared and serial-shared resources. Findings: The proposed model helps bank managers to find the source of inefficiencies and establish a connection between the results of the periodic performance of the DMUs and the distribution of serial and cross-shared resources. The results show that the weighting coefficients of the periods do not significantly affect the overall efficiency of commercial bank branches, unlike desirable and undesirable intermediates. Originality/value: This paper presents the following factors: (1) A new mixed-integer network data envelopment analysis model is developed under dynamic competitive conditions. (2) For the first time in DEA models, the concept of cross-shared resources is proposed to consider shared resources between DMUs. (3) All controllable, uncontrollable, desirable and undesirable outputs in the model are considered with the possibility to transfer to the next periods. (4) A case study is given for the performance evaluation of 38 branches of an Iranian commercial bank from 2016 to 2020. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether banks' information technology (IT) can substitute for local branch presence in the provision of small business credit. Our identification strategy relies on loan-level data and the unique institutional features of the Italian public guarantee scheme during COVID-19. Despite the availability of online applications and low screening incentives, small business lending remains local even for first-time borrowers. However, IT partly mitigates the impact of local branch presence: banks with better IT provide more, cheaper, and faster guaranteed loans and lend more in areas where they have no bank branches, especially to first-time borrowers. This paper was accepted by Victoria Ivashina, finance. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4957. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the web crawler method to obtain information on the distribution of commercial bank branches in China and uses the multidimensional fixed-effects model to explore the impact of commercial bank expansion on firm pollution emissions and its mechanism. The findings reveal that commercial bank expansion significantly reduces firms’ pollution emissions and that there is an optimal geographical radius for this suppression effect. The number of commercial bank branches within 20 km of the firm has the biggest inhibiting influence on the firm’s pollution emission, which diminishes as geographical distance increases. This dampening effect remains robust after testing using the instrumental variable method and the Difference-In-Differences method. Examination of heterogeneity demonstrates that the influence of commercial bank expansion on firm pollution emission depends on the degree of regional low-carbon policies and laws, the level of pollution in the industry, and capital intensity of the industry, as well as the firm’s size and ownership. The mechanism test proves that commercial bank expansion reduces firm pollution emissions by promoting technological progress and increasing their investment in pollution reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of access to electricity on financial development. In doing so, we use a number of instrumental variables (IV) approaches. Using panel data for 38 countries in Sub‐Saharan Africa over the period 2000–2018, the results suggest that more people having access to electricity can promote financial development. In addition, mobile phone and commercial bank branches diffusion serve as potential channels through which access to electricity affects financial development. Our results are robust to sample‐splitting and different estimation techniques. The results have important implications for policies in overcoming barriers to electricity access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using natural disasters as shocks to local economies, we document that a bank branch's ability to set deposit rates locally has real effects. Following disasters, branches with rates set locally increase deposit rates more and experience higher deposit volumes in affected counties. Consistent with imperfect insurance from internal capital markets, banks with more branches setting rates locally relatively expand mortgage lending in affected counties. House prices recover faster in local areas where more branches' rates are set locally. This paper was accepted by Tomasz Piskorski, finance. Supplemental Material: The data files and online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4856. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agriculture plays a vital role in driving economic output and employment in SubSaharan African (SSA) countries. Despite some progress, agricultural productivity in SSA still lags behind other regions. Limited access to finance remains a significant impediment to improving agricultural productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper investigates the effect of financial proximity on agricultural productivity in Sub-Saharan African countries. The study primarily employs the system GMM estimator, chosen to address the endogeneity issue typical in macro panel data. This method is also wellsuited to our study because it accommodates a high number of cross-sections relative to the number of periods within each cross-section. Additionally, the IV-2SLS method is employed to check the robustness of the findings. The study uses an unbalanced panel for the 36 African countries with data for the period 2004-2019. Our findings show that increasing the financial proximity favors agricultural productivity in SSA countries. Specifically, the number of commercial bank branches (CBB) and the number of automated teller machines (ATM) per 100 000 adults, as indicators of financial proximity, have positive and significant effects on agricultural value added per worker in SSA. Additionally, our findings show that rainfall, arable land, and institutional quality are robust determinants of agricultural productivity. The positive effects of the number of CBB and the number of ATM are even more pronounced on agricultural productivity when coupled with strong institutional quality. Our findings suggest that improving financial services' accessibility in rural areas, coupled with enhanced institutional quality, regular rainfall, ample arable land, and increased access to water and land, are pivotal steps for achieving sustainable enhancements in labor productivity. This, in turn, leads to increased returns through value-added growth and expanded employment in the agricultural sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a randomized controlled trial to compare different banking delivery channels. Individuals living close to banking agents and branches of the same financial institution were encouraged to open a savings account and transact at either an agent or a branch. Compared with individuals sent to a branch, individuals sent to an agent increased their number of transactions at the agent and incurred lower transaction costs there. One year later, 42% of active users still used both channels but made transactions at the agent only half as large as those made at the branch. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) production games combine DEA theory with cooperation games and assess the benefits to production organizations with single-stage structure. However, in practical production problems, the production organizations are always with network structures. The structure of the production organization not only affects its own benefits, but also relates to the cooperation among organizations. Therefore, it is necessary to study DEA production games with network structures. In this paper, we consider the production organizations with two-stage processes, wherein the organizations are assumed to possess available resources and own technologies. The technology level of each organization is reflected by the observed units based on the network DEA (NDEA) production possibility set. Suppose that the organizations can cooperate through the ways of pooling the initial resources and (or) sharing the technology in each production process. According to the different cooperation styles of each stage in the alliance, seven types of cooperation among organizations are considered. The models of maximizing the revenues of coalitions, namely the NDEA production games, are established corresponding to the seven types, by which the maximal revenue for each coalition can be calculated. We prove that two-stage DEA production games have the super-additive property, and can be expressed as linear programming games. Hence, they are equivalent to the linear production games, and they are totally balanced. Therefore, the proposed cooperative games have a non-empty core, and hence have nucleolus, and the Owen set belongs to the core. In addition, based on the basic conceptions of the nucleolus and the Owen set, the revenue can be allocated among organizations in the alliance. Finally, a numerical example and an empirical application to 17 bank branches of the China Construction Bank in the Anhui Province are presented to illustrate the applicability of the proposed approach, and the relationship between the cooperative manners and the revenue allocation is reflected in analytical results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As global warming's impact on humanity surpasses initial predictions, numerous countries confront heightened risks associated with escalating urban carbon footprints. Concurrently, digital finance has flourished, propelled by advancements in digital technology. This convergence underscores the urgency of exploring digital finance's role in mitigating urban carbon footprint pressures. This study analyzes data spanning 277 Chinese cities from 2011 to 2020, yielding several key findings: Firstly, we developed a dataset detailing the carbon footprint pressures in these cities, revealing that variations in these pressures predominantly correlate with economic growth. Secondly, our analysis indicates that digital finance has a significant impact on reducing urban carbon footprint pressures, through mechanisms such as reducing the number of physical bank branches and enhancing residents' environmental awareness. Thirdly, the study identifies that the efficacy of digital finance in reducing carbon footprint pressures varies according to factors like sunshine duration and geographic location. The insights from this research aim to contribute substantively to strategies for sustainable urban development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A robust body of research suggests that entrepreneurial activities benefit from financial development and external financing access. However, there is a gap in understanding how and the extent to which the accessibility to financial services is associated with entrepreneurial activity. Based on an unbalanced panel of 2104 Brazilian municipalities spanning 2010–2021 and comprising 23,769 municipality-year observations, our results not only confirm that bank accessibility, proxied by the number of bank branches in a municipality, is positively correlated with the number of firms but also that the relationship is nonlinear, being stronger for larger firms. By estimating a model using first differences, we find a positive causal impact of an additional bank branch on the number of firms in a municipality of 0.2% (about 26 extra firms on average). Our study contributes to the literature by corroborating that access to external financing services shapes entrepreneurial activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Banks are one of the key drivers of economic development across communities. Banking deserts—defined by inadequate banking access—limit access to capital, inhibit wealth accumulation, and increase exposure to predatory lending. Banking desert formation could be profit-driven, with lower-income and less densely populated regions more likely to become banking deserts. Discrimination could also play a role here: banks may have less presence in areas with higher minority populations. The authors use a panel, census tract-level data set for the entire state of North Carolina to investigate how these forces impact banking access and banking desert formation. Panel methodologies are incorporated to investigate the extent to which profit and discrimination mechanisms each drive banking access and banking desert formation. Profit and discrimination mechanisms are shown to play roles, highlighting the need for policies that mitigate bank branch losses in underserved neighborhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

State-owned enterprises have responsibilities to conduct head office's strategies to make profits, to execute public programs and obligations, to maintain their viabilities, to serve customers, and to manage employees. Those prompt their branch managers not only to explore their environment but also to face a goal conflict situation. This study is to investigate the effects of branch managers' boundary spanning activities and resource orchestration on the performance of branch offices in the dynamics of environmental uncertainty and goal conflict. This study employs structural equation modeling on one of the most prominent state-owned banks in Indonesia, with 201 branch offices as the unit of analysis, and 186 branch managers as respondents. The results of this study show that boundary spanning activities have a positive and significant relationship with resource orchestration. Meanwhile, both boundary spanning activities and resource orchestration are to influence the performance of branch offices. However, the influence varies widely, depending on environmental uncertainty and goal conflict experienced by branch managers. Furthermore, this study delves into an interesting phenomenon, that goal conflict situation, instead of reducing boundary spanning activities, it increases them but has no impact on resource orchestration. This closely relates to the culture of Indonesia as a nation with high power distance, low individualism, low masculinity, and low indulgence which represent preferences to prioritize workplace harmony, obey supervisors, and be loyal to the workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scheduled commercial banks (SCBs) in India have been playing a pivotal role, contributing immensely to the overall development of the economy. The SCBs comprise public sector banks (PSBs), private sector banks (PVSBs) and the branches of foreign banks (FBs). These banks are facing a major challenge in the form of deteriorating asset quality, triggering a substantial increase in the amount of non-performing assets (NPAs). Consequently, their profit is either plummeting or they are suffering and reporting higher losses. This study examines the asset quality of three ownership groups of SCBs, viz., PSBs, PVSBs and FBs, and the impact of asset quality on their reported profit, using performance statistics for the period 2012-13 to 2021-22. For evaluation of asset quality of banks and also its impact on their profit, descriptive statistics, one-way ANOVA, chi-square, correlation and t-test are used. It is found that deteriorating asset quality is the root cause for the mounting NPAs and the provision against these NPAs. The study also establishes that the amount of profit has been affected adversely by the deteriorating asset quality of SCBs in varying rates (insignificant to significant and negative to positive). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the important issues of banking today is the role bank branches and online banking solutions play in serving consumers. With the help of a representative Survey of 1,000 adults in Hungary conducted in 2022, we examine how well online and mobile banking solutions can provide a suitable alternative to bank branches. Based on our results, online banking solutions cannot fully replace personal banking in Hungary due to the customers' attitudes, as we can see that their use does not significantly affect the frequency of visits to the bank branch, and their usage rate does not increase with the distance from the bank branch. We also point out that for the Hungarian population the trend of bank branch closures may entail the risk of being left out of the formal financial system mostly for the older, digitally less receptive social strata living in small settlements and in a relatively worse financial situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Noteworthy contributions have highlighted that human contact is a considerable factor in bank-firm relationships. It allows the acquisition of soft information, which alleviates information asymmetries and increases the use of bank debt. The advent of digital technologies in the information collection process open new horizons and change the role of personal contacts in bank-firm interactions, as entrepreneurs visit bank branches less frequently. This study uses a large sample of Italian SMEs from 2011 to 2020 and finds that the rapid increase and use of digital instruments have reduced the positive influence of physical closeness between banks and SMEs on the indebtedness levels. Interestingly, our study has also found that the COVID-19 crisis did not amplify this moderating effect. Results support theories that human contact is an important factor in bank-firm relationships because it allows the acquisition of soft information, which alleviates information asymmetries and increases the use of bank debt. Our study suggests that close human ties are still extremely relevant and digitalization should be exploited to support the collection of the kind of qualitative soft information that is crucial in debt negotiations. Plain English Summary: The growing integration and digitalization of banks gives rise to a question: are local personal bank-entrepreneur relationships still important for small businesses? We interestingly find that human relationships between the bank and the firm occurring at the local level are important in the soft information collection procedures, positively influencing the amount of debt that SMEs use. In light of such relevance, governments' challenge consists on directing banks toward a system that strengthens the collection of soft information in a digitalized world. In a phygital future, digitalization should thus be exploited to provide banks not only quantitative data, but also qualitative information that support lending decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]