Job Market Paper

Agricultural Credit and Women's Agency: Experimental Evidence from India

(with Berber Kramer, Patrick Ward and Subhransu Pattnaik)

Abstract: Women-focused programs aimed at increasing their income and agency are costly and difficult to implement. Evaluations of cash transfers and loans find that resources are often appropriated into assets and enterprises not controlled by women. We hypothesize that improving liquidity constraints for households increases household consumption and residual income for individual members, and improves women's welfare. We test this using a randomized provision of collateral-free loans to over 1,300 small and marginal farmers across 80 villages in India. Employing ANCOVA and IV estimations, we find that women in loan-receiving households report independent access to banking services through debit cards and mobile phones, and allocate more time towards leisure. The households increase ownership of productive capital and consumer durables in response to the program but there are no impacts on agricultural productivity or income. Although the program did not target women’s financial autonomy or time use, it produced unintended positive effects, highlighting the potential for individual-level gains in household-level economic programs that do not increase the risk of resource appropriation.