The effects of financial development on crop productivity: ARDL evidence from Indian agriculture

Purpose - This work aims to empirically investigate the effects of financial development on crop productivity of India. Design/methodology/approach - Time series data such as crop production index, International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) financial development index, gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, arable land, rural population, trade openness and physical capital from 1980 to 2020 was used. The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach of cointegration was used to determine the long-run equilibrium relationship between the selected time series. Also, ARDL long- and short-run coefficients were estimated to examine the effects of selected variables on crop productivity. Furthermore, to establish the robustness of results, long-run estimators such as fully modified least squares and the dynamic least squares were also used. Finally, using the vector error-correction model, causality between the selected time series was examined. Findings - The ARDL cointegration test confirmed the existence of long-run equilibrium relationship among agricultural productivity, financial development, capital formation, GDP per capita, arable land, rural population and trade openness. The estimated long-run elasticities from all the three techniques and the short-run elasticities of ARDL have consistently suggested that the elasticity of financial development is higher (1.55% and 1.40%, respectively) in explaining the crop productivity of India. The short-run causality estimates indicated the presence of positive bidirectional causality between crop productivity and financial development and seven positive unidirectional causal relationships between the selected variables. Practical implications - Agricultural credit being an important non-land input and essential for overall growth and sustenance of agricultural sector, the policymakers should ensure the overall development of its financial sector which will reduce the intermediation, informational and other transactional costs associated with agricultural credit. This will possibly result in timely availability and access to adequate and low-cost credit from institutional sources. Originality/value - Though extensive research is available on the effects of financial development on economic growth, limited research is available concerning the impact of financial development on crop productivity, especially for an emerging economy like India. For India, predominantly studies have investigated the impact of farm credit on crop productivity but have not exclusively examined the effects of financial development on agricultural productivity. Therefore, this study not only adds to the empirical literature but also provides new evidence on the nexus between financial development and crop productivity by examining the effects of financial development on crop productivity using the composite financial development index developed by the IMF using the ARDL bounds test for cointegration and other econometric estimators.