Does the owner’s caste affect access to credit for enterprises in India’s unorganized sector?
Ashay Kadam, Prakash Singh, Jayati Chatterjee
Publisher
Routledge
Citation
Kadam, A., Singh, P., & Chatterjee, J. (2023). Does the owner’s caste
affect access to credit for enterprises in India’s unorganized sector?
Applied Economics Letters, 1–6.
https://doi.org/10.1080/13504851.2023.2186346
Journal
Applied Economics Letters
Abstract
Using a large publicly available dataset, we examine the extent of
difficulty faced by marginalized caste entrepreneurs from the
unorganized sector in India when trying to access formal credit for their
small businesses. Contrary to the expectation that a perceived social
vulnerability would translate to more difficult credit access, we find that
entrepreneurs from marginalized castes are in fact more likely to obtain
credit from the formal financial system. This result on the extensive
margin of credit could be interpreted as the formal financial system’s
positive bias towards the marginalized castes. However, when we focus
on the actual loan amounts received, we find that all else being equal,
entrepreneurs from marginalized castes receive significantly lower loan
amounts. This result on intensive margin of credit could potentially be
interpreted as evidence of negative discrimination by the formal financial
system. Therefore, determining whether financial inclusion policies for
marginalized caste entrepreneurs have been successful yields answers
both ways, depending on whether we look at extensive or intensive
margin of credit. This finding has serious implications for a good design,
monitoring and evaluation of financial inclusion policies (such as
mandatory lending within affirmative action programmes or priority
sector lending) for borrowers from marginalized communities.