Rural indebtedness and dependence on private moneylenders is an age-old problem in India. For more than 100 years now, the Central Government and the Reserve Bank of India have been making efforts to enhance institutional credit in rural areas particularly to assist in agricultural operations....

Using a rare flood in April 2019 in Iran as a natural experiment, we study the role of local banks in mitigating the financial consequence of natural disasters to smallholder farmers. We find that local branches immediately react to the disaster by increasing their lending for two months...