Impact of financial inclusion on economic growth in secular and religious countries

Peterson Ozili, Sok Heng Lay and Aamir Syed

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Empirical research on the relationship between financial inclusion and economic growth has neglected the influence of religion or secularism. We investigate the effect of financial inclusion on economic growth in religious and secular countries. The financial inclusion indicators are the number of ATMs per 100,000 adults and the number of bank branches per 100,000 adults. The findings reveal that bank branch contraction significantly increases economic growth in secular countries. Bank branch expansion combined with greater internet usage increases economic growth in secular countries while high ATM supply combined with greater internet usage decreases economic growth in secular countries. We also find that bank branch expansion, in the midst of a widening poverty gap, significantly increases economic growth in religious countries, implying that financial inclusion through bank branch expansion is effective in promoting economic growth in poor religious countries. It was also found that internet usage is a strong determinant of economic growth in secular countries.

Keywords: financial inclusion; economic growth; ATMs per 100; 000 adults; bank branches per 100; 000 adults; poverty; internet usage; access of finance; religion; religious countries; secular countries. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E32 E51 G21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban, nep-fdg, nep-fle, nep-gro, nep-ict and nep-pay
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/116413/1/MPRA_paper_116413.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Impact of financial inclusion on economic growth in secular and religious countries (2023)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:116413

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().