Although many view financial access as a means of reducing poverty or increasing growth, empirical studies have produced contradictory results. One problem is that most studies cover only a short time frame and do not consider dynamic effects. I show that introducing credit in a general model of...

In India both men and women with more education live in households with greater consumption per capita. Yet aggregating across age cohorts and states, an extra year of education brings male cohorts only 4% more consumption and provides no additional consumption for female cohorts. This result is...