1 Introduction -- 2 Theory and Hypotheses: The Effects of Using Soft Information on a Lender’s Performance, Specifically in Interbank Competition -- 3 Survey Data from Japanese Regional Banks and Using Soft Information in Lending Decisions -- 4 The Influence of Using Soft Information on Lender...

Does financial development facilitate micro-entrepreneurship? Using randomized surveys of over 1 million Indian households and district-level bank branch location pre-determined by government policy, we find instead that financial access shifts workers from informal entrepreneurship into formal...