新兴市场的信贷和产品创新：来自印度的证据

Credit and ProductInnovation in EmergingMarkets: Evidence fromIndia Siddharth George, Divya Kirti, Nils Olle Herman Lange, MariaSoledad Martinez Peria, and Rajesh Vijayaraghavan WP/25/192 IMF Working Papersdescribe research inprogress by the author(s) and are published toelicit comments and to encourage debate.The views expressed in IMF Working Papers arethose of the author(s) and do not necessarilyrepresent the views of the IMF, its Executive Board,or IMF management. 2025SEP IMF Working PaperResearch Department Credit and Product Innovation in Emerging Markets: Evidence from IndiaPrepared by Siddharth George, Divya Kirti, Nils Olle Herman Lange, Maria Soledad Martinez Peria, andRajesh Vijayaraghavan* Authorized for distribution by Giovanni Dell’AricciaSeptember 2025 IMF Working Papersdescribe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicitcomments and to encourage debate.The views expressed in IMF Working Papers are those of theauthor(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF, its Executive Board, or IMF management. ABSTRACT:We study how access to bank financing affects product innovation in a developing country contextby analyzing a reform that broadened credit eligibility for many small Indian manufacturing firms. Newly eligiblefirms borrow more but, on average, do not introduce new or more complex products or expand product scope.Many firms appear to operate below efficient scale and use credit to expand existing product lines rather thaninnovate. Moreover, most firms face several additional barriers that weaken the impact of credit on innovation.Among firms that do not face these additional barriers, credit access boosts innovation, as in advancedeconomies. Credit and Product Innovation inEmerging Markets: Evidence fromIndia Prepared by Siddharth George, Divya Kirti, Nils Olle Herman Lange, MariaSoledad Martinez Peria, and Rajesh Vijayaraghavan 1Introduction Innovation is a key driver of economic growth (Romer, 1990; Aghion & Howitt,1992) and a policy goal for many governments. Financing is an important input,since innovation activities like research, patenting, and product development oftenrequire substantial upfront investment. Many policy initiatives to promote inno-vation thus aim to improve firms’ access to credit. Prior research, largely focusedon advanced economies, shows that access to bank credit enables innovation (e.g.,Babina, Bernstein, & Mezzanotti, 2023; Granja & Moreira, 2023; Mezzanotti & Sim-coe, 2023). However, bank credit may have different effects in developing countries,where firms face tighter financial constraints and other barriers to innovation (Ver-hoogen, 2023).These additional barriers may shape how firms use credit, sinceinnovation usually involves multiple, complementary inputs (Kremer, 1993). In this paper, we study how access to bank credit affects product innovation inemerging markets. The introduction of new, complex products is an important di-mension of innovation (e.g., Akcigit & Kerr, 2018; Argente, Lee, & Moreira, 2018;Braguinsky, Ohyama, Okazaki, & Syverson, 2021), particularly in developing coun-tries where innovation typically involves less R&D, patenting, or invention of noveltechnologies (Verhoogen, 2023). Using rich data on Indian manufacturing firms,we examine how improved credit access affected product innovation. The firms westudy operate in a very different environment from advanced economies: they aremuch smaller and face multiple frictions in input and output markets. These fric-tions lead to a nuanced relationship between credit and innovation. Among firmsthat face few barriers, credit access fosters innovation, as in advanced economies(Granja & Moreira, 2023). However, for the average firm, additional barriers hin-der their ability to translate credit into new and better products, diluting the effectof credit on innovation. Instead, these firms use credit to scale their existing oper-ations and more fully utilize current capacity. To identify the role of credit, we evaluate a policy change that improved creditaccess for many Indian firms. India has a long history of supporting credit accessfor micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) through a variety of schemes.Most notably, starting in 1974, the Reserve Bank of India’s Priority Sector Lending(PSL) scheme has required all banks to allocate a sizable share of lending to firmsbelow a size threshold. In 2006, the government expanded eligibility criteria for these schemes, raising the size threshold from Rs 10 million to Rs 50 million. Firmswith capital stock between Rs 10-50 million thus became newly eligible for the PSLand other credit access programs.1 We examine the impact of this change usinga standard difference-in-differences design, comparing (i) newly eligible firms tofirms whose eligibility status did not change, (ii) before and after 2006. Rich, firm-level data on product-wise sales for the near-universe of Indian man-ufacturing firms enabl