By author > Garg Sandhya

This paper examines whether better financial access can mitigate the impact of social identity on entrepreneurship. Using a novel dataset of Indian villages and distance to bank branches, we find that proximity to a bank branch improves entrepreneurship of under-privileged caste groups in the non-agricultural sector and sectors previously dominated by the privileged caste groups. We find that this effect is mediated by the uptake of institutional credit by under-privileged groups, driven by lower access costs for borrowers and better assessment of creditworthiness by proximate lenders. Our results show that financial inclusion can break rigid social norms around caste and occupation in India.