Does improved access to financial sources increase entrepreneurship across gender? We explore this question in the Indian context, by constructing a novel measure of financial access defined as the distance of each unbanked village to the nearest banked centre. Using economic census data at the village level, we find that the proximity of an unbanked village to a banked centre within 5 km increases entrepreneurship in the non-agricultural sector. While exploring the mechanisms, we find that the impact on women is driven by the uptake of institutional credit. The prevailing norms around gender influence the gains from bank proximity as the impact on women enterprises occurs mainly in villages which have liberal social norms. Results hold when we use the number of branches within 5 km as an alternate measure of financial access. Results are robust to several additional tests. Our results show that the lack of nearby banking facilities represents a key constraint for women, and hence, widespread banking outreach can boost female entrepreneurship in rural areas.

改善获得财务来源的机会是否会增加跨性别的创业精神？我们在印度的背景下探讨了这个问题，构建了一种新的金融准入衡量标准，定义为每个没有银行账户的村庄到最近的银行中心的距离。利用村庄一级的经济普查数据，我们发现，没有银行账户的村庄距离银行账户中心5公里以内的距离会增加非农业部门的创业精神。在探索这些机制时，我们发现对女性的影响是由机构信贷的吸收所驱动的。围绕性别的普遍规范会影响银行邻近性带来的收益，因为对女性企业的影响主要发生在社会规范自由的村庄。当我们使用 5 公里内的分支机构数量作为金融准入的替代衡量标准时，结果成立。结果对于几个额外的测试来说是稳健的。我们的研究结果表明，附近缺乏银行设施是女性面临的一个关键制约因素，因此，广泛的银行服务可以促进农村地区的女性创业。