Title: What determines the household decision to borrow for investment or repayment of old debt? The Indian story

Authors: Moumita Poddar; Tanmoyee Banerjee; Ajitava Raychaudhuri

Addresses: Department of Economics, Jadavpur University, 188, Raja S.C. Mallick Road, Kolkata, 700032, West Bengal, India ' Department of Economics, Jadavpur University, 188, Raja S.C. Mallick Road, Kolkata, 700032, West Bengal, India ' Department of Economics, Jadavpur University, 188, Raja S.C. Mallick Road, Kolkata, 700032, West Bengal, India

Abstract: Borrowing for investment in either physical or human capital promotes growth while that for consumption or debt repayment may lead to so called 'debt-trap' for the households. The present paper probes deeper into the decision-making process of the households regarding choice between these alternative borrowing. The data comes from All India Debt and Investment Survey (NSS 70th round). These methods used are Cragg's Box-Cox double hurdle model and instrumental variable (IV) probit model. Our study shows the decision to borrow for investment purposes depends on such factors as gender, religion, location, education, asset position as well as on the status of financial inclusion of households. The decision to borrow for repayment of existing debt is most prevalent among urban educated households in addition to land-owning rural borrowers.

Keywords: institutional borrowing; capital formation; financial inclusion; inequality; potential debt-trap.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIDS.2022.122720

International Journal of Information and Decision Sciences, 2022 Vol.14 No.1, pp.60 - 84

Received: 11 Dec 2019
Accepted: 28 Mar 2020
Published online: 09 May 2022 *

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