Capital Markets, Technology, Financial Inclusion, and Economic Growth

ISB-NBER 2023

The second annual ISB-NBER conference on Economic Policy and the Indian Economy will be held at the Indian School of Business (ISB) in Hyderabad on December 16-17, 2023. The meeting will emphasize the relationships between capital markets and technology, and particularly the intersection of the two, and financial inclusion and economic growth. The meeting will be co-organized by Shilpa Aggarwal (ISB) and Amit Seru (Stanford University and NBER).

Priority topics for discussion at the conference include, but are not limited to:

Factors that contribute to financial exclusion, including caste, gender and race
Effects of financial exclusion on economic performance and household well-being
Consequences of government policies and private sector initiatives that seek to reduce financial market frictions and promote access to financial markets
Impact of digital transformation, mobile money and AI/ML in expanding access and reducing frictions
Implications of capital market regulations, including those affecting banks and securities markets, for financial market access by small businesses and low-income households

The conference will spotlight research on the Indian economy and the South Asian region, but studies of other regions that have broad implications are also welcome.

Agenda

Friday, December 15
06:30 pm	Dinner at the Sheraton Hyderabad
Saturday, December 16
09:00 am	Coffee and Tea
09:30 am	Can Cashless Payments Spur Economic Growth? Amiyatosh Purnanandam, University of Michigan Tamanna Singh Dubey, University of Michigan Discussant: Viral V. Acharya, New York University and NBER
10:30 am	Can Open Banking Substitute Credit Bureaus? Kumar Rishabh, HEC Lausanne Discussant: Amit Seru, Stanford University and NBER
11:30 am	Break
12:00 pm	Impact of the GST on Corporate Tax Evasion: Evidence from Indian Tax Records Sumit Agarwal, National University of Singapore Shashwat Alok, Indian School of Business Shiv Dixit, Indian School of Business Tejaswi Velayudhan, University of Michigan Discussant: James Poterba, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
01:00 pm	Lunch
02:00 pm	The Moneylender as Middleman: Formal Credit Supply and Informal Loans in Rural India Vaishnavi Surendra, Precision Development (PxD) Discussant: Anusha Chari, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and NBER
03:00 pm	Banks, Misallocation and Structural Transformation: Evidence from India Marshall Mo, Stanford University Dian Jiao, Columbia University Discussant: Luigi Zingales, University of Chicago and NBER
04:00 pm	Break
04:30 pm	Panel Discussion on FinTech and Financial Inclusion
06:30 pm	Dinner
Sunday, December 17
08:30 am	Coffee and Tea
09:00 am	Mobile Money, Interoperability and Financial Inclusion Nicola Limodio, Bocconi University Markus K. Brunnermeier, Princeton University and NBER Lorenzo Spadavecchia, Bocconi University Discussant: Per Stromberg, Stockholm School of Economics
10:00 am	Disentangling the Effects of Financial Inclusion on Household Well-Being(slides) Nandini Gupta, Indiana University Ashish K. Sedai, University of Texas at Arlington Discussant: Tarun Ramadorai, Imperial College London
11:00 am	Break
11:30 am	Information Frictions and Take-up of Government Credit Programs Apoorv Gupta, Dartmouth College Jacopo Ponticelli, Northwestern University and NBER Andrea Tesei, Queen Mary University of London Discussant: Raghuram Rajan, University of Chicago and NBER
12:30 pm	Lunch
01:30 pm	Using Lotteries to Attract Deposits Paul Gertler, University of California, Berkeley and NBER Sean Higgins, Northwestern University Aisling Scott, University of California at Berkeley Enrique Seira, Michigan State University Discussant: Shilpa Aggarwal, Indian School of Business
02:30 pm	Does "Financial Affirmative Action" Affect Minority Well-Being? Evidence from a Directed Credit Program for Religious Minorities Subrata Kumar Ritadhi, Ashoka University Muhammad Yasir Khan, University of Pittsburgh Discussant: Rohini Pande, Yale University and NBER
03:30 pm	Adjourn