Revisiting financial inclusion-stability nexus: cross-country heterogeneity
Journal of Financial Economic Policy
ISSN: 1757-6385
Article publication date: 5 April 2022
Issue publication date: 19 August 2022
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate the debated nexus of financial inclusion (FI) and financial stability (FS) in a comprehensive way, with several indicators of FI, considering nonlinearity and cross-country heterogeneity.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors introduce several indexes for FI by applying principal component analysis (PCA) and explore their impact on stability for a sample of 108 countries and subsamples based on income grouping as well as for pre- and post-crisis episodes over the period 2004–2017. To address the heterogeneity and endogeneity, the authors use the two-step quantile regression (2SQR), three-stage least square (3SLS) and two-step system-GMM (System-GMM).
Findings
The findings reveal that the relationship of FI and stability depends on the measurement of FI used and the heterogeneity of different macroeconomic factors. Besides, there is nonlinearity, irrespective of the measurement of inclusion used. The findings also confirm that the effect of FI is more prominent in countries with strong governance. The results are robust to several robustness validations, which could be useful for policymakers to align the divergence of these policies and ensure FS while expanding access to formal financial services.
Originality/value
This study makes an attempt to explore the reasons behind the debated empirical findings of the existing literature by revisiting the nexus using several disaggregated indexes, each representing individual dimension and a multidimensional index, examine the possible nonlinearity and investigate the conditioning effect of different macroeconomic factors that might play a significant role in this relationship.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This study was based on the third chapter of first author’s unpublished PhD thesis. She is deeply thankful to Prof. Dr. Dongmin Kong, her PhD supervisors, for his continuing support and invaluable advice. The authors would like to express their profound gratitude to the editor and anonymous reviewers for their enlightening comments and recommendations, which aided in improving the paper’s quality. Any remaining errors are entirely their own.
Citation
Saha, M. and Dutta, K.D. (2022), "Revisiting financial inclusion-stability nexus: cross-country heterogeneity", Journal of Financial Economic Policy, Vol. 14 No. 5, pp. 713-742. https://doi.org/10.1108/JFEP-06-2021-0162
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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