LOCAL BANKING AND MANUFACTURING GROWTH: EVIDENCE FROM INDIA
This paper examines the relationship between local banking sector development and manufacturing. Using a unique data set consisting of district-level data from India, this paper explores the relationship between the availability of local credit and the growth of the manufacturing sector in the district. Using panel data and a generalised method of moments (GMM) model, the results provide support for the view that financial development at the local level is important for the growth of manufacturing in the region. This suggests that for the development of manufacturing across various local regions, it is not enough to have a few centres with developed financial infrastructure, but that the development of the financial sector in the local region is also important. Further, we find that sector-specific credit, specifically credit to the manufacturing sector in the district, has a positive impact on local manufacturing output, and not the total credit in the district. This suggests that sector-specific lending technology is important for the development of specific sectors. Another interesting result obtained is that the coefficient of the interaction term between financial development and human capital, proxied by the literacy rate in the population, is negative. This suggests that, ceteris paribus, the constraints on the growth of manufacturing due to financial sector development are lower in districts with higher literacy levels. The results of this study suggest that policies to increase manufacturing output at the local level would do well to pay attention to the development of a geographically dispersed banking sector with sector-specific lending capabilities.