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Is Digital Financial Inclusion Unlocking Growth?
Digital financial services have been a key driver of financial inclusion in recent years. While there is evidence that financial inclusion through traditional services has a positive impact on economic growth, do the same results carry over for digital financial inclusion? What drives digital financial inclusion? Why does it advance more in some countries but not in others? Using new indices of financial inclusion developed in Khera et. al. (2021), this paper addresses these questions for 52 developing countries. Using cross-sectional instrument variable procedure, we find that the exogenous component of digital financial inclusion is positively associated with growth in GDP per capita during 2011-2018, which suggests that digital financial inclusion can accelerate economic growth. Fractional logit and random effects empirical estimation identifies access to infrastructure, financial and digital literacy, and quality of institutions as key drivers of digital financial inclusion. These findings are then used to help inform policy recommendations in areas related to the digitization of financial services to promote financial inclusion.
The Promise of Fintech
Technology is changing the landscape of the financial sector, increasing access to financial services in profound ways. These changes have been in motion for several years, affecting nearly all countries in the world. During the COVID-19 pandemic, technology has created new opportunities for digital financial services to accelerate and enhance financial inclusion, amid social distancing and containment measures. At the same time, the risks emerging prior to COVID-19, as digital financial services developed, are becoming even more relevant.
Women in Fintech: As Leaders and Users
While digital financial services have made access to finance easier, faster, and less costly, helping to broaden digital financial inclusion, its impact on gender gaps varies across countries. Moreover, women leaders in the fintech industry, although growing, remain scarce. This paper explores the interaction between ‘women’ and ‘fintech’ by examining: (i) the role of women leaders on firm-level performance in the fintech industry; and (ii) the determinants of gender gaps in the usage of digital services to better understand the cross-country differences. Results indicate that greater gender diversity in the executive board is associated with better performance of fintech firms.With regard to determinants of the gender gaps in the usage of digital financial services, we find that higher financial and digital literacy of women is associated with lower gender gaps in digital financial inclusion, and that socio-cultural factors also play a key role.
Closing Gender Gaps in India: Does Increasing Womens’ Access to Finance Help?
Gender gaps in womens’ economic opportunities—labor market and entrepreneurship—have remained high in India. Lack of adequate collateral limits women entrepreneurs’ ability to access formal finance, leaving them to rely on informal sources, constraining their growth. A small-open economy DSGE model is built to investigate the long-run macroeconomic impacts from closing gender gaps in financial access. Results suggest that an increase in women entrepreneurs access to formal credit results in higher female entrepreneurship and employment, which boosts India’s output by 1.6 percent. However, regulations and gender-specific constraints in the labor market limit potential gains as females’ access to quality jobs in the formal sector remains restricted. The paper shows that the factors influencing the number of females are different from those influencing the share of females in formal economic activity. Combining gender-targeted financial inclusion policies with policies that lower constraints on formal sector employment could boost India’s output by 6.8 percent.
Macroeconomic Impact of Product and Labor Market Reforms on Informality and Unemployment in India
This paper investigates the implications of lowering formal regulations in labor and product markets on informality and macroeconomic outcomes in India. We estimate a DSGE model with an informal sector, and rigidities in the formal labor and product markets. Along with increasing GDP and employment, deregulation also leads to lower informality and greater product market competition. Slow reallocation of resources between the formal and informal sectors leads to some adverse impacts in the short run that can be minimized by implementing a combined package of reforms. These impacts are shown to be greater in an economy with a larger informal sector.
Digital Financial Inclusion in Emerging and Developing Economies: a New Index
Digital Financial Inclusion in Emerging and Developing Economies: A New Index
Monetary Policy in India
This book presents research that applies contemporary monetary theory and state-of-the-art econometric methods to the analysis of the monetary and financial aspects of the Indian economy and the impact of monetary policy on economic performance. Indian monetary policy has attracted significant attention from Indian and international macroeconomists over the last several years. Interest in how monetary policy influences economic performance and how monetary policy is conducted in India is growing. The prospects for further financial sector reform and ongoing inflation in India have sparked new interest in the role of money and monetary policy in India among economists, policy makers and students alike. The book should also interest economists outside India because it studies monetary economics in a major emerging market economy and makes advances in the analysis of how financial market imperfections and structural constraints influence the effects of monetary policy.
India
This Selected Issues paper analyzes the factors behind the unprecedented widening of India’s current account deficit in terms of the sectoral savings-investment balance. Persistently high inflation is found to have depressed real returns, prompting a surge in gold imports and a marked deterioration in household financial savings. The paper investigates inward and outward spillovers to and from India. The results show that output shocks emanating in globally systemic countries have important global effects, but their impact on India is limited. It is found that shocks originating in India have relatively small global implications, but are very important for several South Asian economies.
IMF Research Bulletin, Summer 2017
The Summer 2017 issue of the IMF Research Bulletin highlights new research such as recent IMF Working Papers and Staff Discussion Notes. The Research Summaries are “Structural Reform Packages, Sequencing, and the Informal Economy (by Zsuzsa Munkacsi and Magnus Saxegaard) and “A Broken Social Contract, Not High Inequality Led to the Arab Spring” (by Shantayanan Devarajan and Elena Ianchovichina). The Q&A section features “Seven Questions on Fintech” (by Tommaso Mancini-Griffoli). The Bulletin also includes information on recommended titles from IMF Publications and the latest articles from the IMF Economic Review.
