Financial outreach and household financial constraint

This paper analyses how financial outreach affects the probability of households having financial constraint (i.e. being 'discouraged' and 'rejected' for loan applications). We show that households residing in communities with more bank branches are less likely to be financially constrained. Using the distance to the closest fruit and vegetable (open) market as an instrument for financial outreach, we address the potential endogeneity problem and find our results remain robust. We further provide evidence on the negative relationship between the number of bank branches nearby and the probability of loan rejection, in particular for middle-income young households.