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This study examines the impact of agricultural credit on rice farmers' technical efficiency (TE) in Côte d'Ivoire by considering the heterogeneity among credit sources.

A multistage sampling technique was used to collect data from 588 randomly sampled rice farmers in seven rice areas of the country. The authors use the endogenous stochastic frontier production (ESFP) model to account for the endogeneity of access to agricultural credit.

On the one hand, agricultural credit has a significant and positive impact on rice farmers' TE. Rice farmers receiving agricultural credit have an average of 5% increase in their TE, confirming the positive impact of agricultural credit on TE. On the other hand, the study provides evidence that the impact of credit on rice production efficiency differs depending on the source of credit. Borrowing from agricultural cooperatives and paddy rice buyers/processors positively and significantly influences the TE, while borrowing from microfinance institutions (MFIs) negatively and significantly influences the TE. Moreover, borrowing from relatives/friends does not significantly influence TE.

Future research can further explore the contribution of agricultural credit by including several agricultural productions and using panel data.

The study provides evidence that the impact of agricultural credit on agricultural production efficiency depends on the source of credit. This study contributes to the literature on the impact of agricultural credit and enlightens policymakers in the design of agricultural credit models in developing countries, particularly Côte d'Ivoire.

This study analyzes farmers' preferences for agricultural credit and its market structure in rural Benin using the conjoint analysis approach.

The data used come from primary sources collected from 228 randomly selected farmers. The conjoint analysis approach was used to produce the results. The bias associated with the heteroscedasticity of the error terms was fixed using the weighted least squares estimation method. Agricultural credit markets were segmented using the Calinski algorithm.

The study results reveal that farmers prefer a long-term agricultural credit with a low interest rate received via mobile banking. The interaction between a type of credit with collateral and a low interest rate is positively correlated with farmers' credit demand. The authors also found that agricultural credit markets are heterogeneous because of the heterogeneity in farmers' credit demand. This result has led to three different rural credit market segments identified in the selected study's sites. The market share simulation reveals a significant market share for the type of credit preferred by farmers in two segments.

The proven evidence from this study can guide the development of appropriate agricultural financial products that promote financial inclusion among farmers in rural Benin. More specifically, agricultural financial policies that promote digital long-term credit with low interest rate and appropriate guarantee mechanisms can promote financial inclusion among farmers and reduce the problem of asymmetric information in agricultural credit market. The study also calls for the promotion of differentiated policies across the three identified segments in order to positively impact the welfare of all farmers.

The use of agricultural financial products that include digital long-term credit with low interest rate and appropriate guarantee mechanisms promote financial inclusion and reduce asymmetric information problems in agricultural credit markets in rural Benin.

The promotion of long-term digital and cheap credit improves farmers household's wellbeing in rural Benin.

This study contributes to a better understanding of the structure of rural credit markets. It also reveals the most preferred characteristics of rural credit profiles by farmers. Besides, it validates the importance of the use of guarantee as an appropriate mechanism which minimizes the problem of asymmetric information between financial agents and farmers.

This paper investigates the impact of bank credit on agricultural productivity in the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC) from 1990 to 2019. Studies’ results on the impact of bank credit on agricultural productivity are not conclusive. The studies demonstrate diverse outcomes which are debatable. The results are conflicting.

Agricultural value added (AGRVA) to the gross domestic product (GDP) proxies agricultural productivity while domestic credit to the private sector by banks (DCPSB), broad money supply, land, inflation (INF), physical capital (PHKAP) and labour supply are explanatory variables. The autoregressive distributed lag technique is utilized.

The co-integration test results show a long-run co-integration among the variables. The findings disclose that DCPSB, land and PHKAP impact positively on the AGRVA. Broad money supply, INF and labour impact negatively on the AGRVA to the GDP.

The results suggest that the CEMAC governments should encourage effective ways to increase bank credit flow to private enterprises in the agricultural sector through efficient bank's intermediation.

The governments should create more agricultural banks and improve the operation of existing ones to ensure direct credit to agricultural activities. The Bank of Central African Economic and Monetary Community should apply aggressive policy which eliminates all the bottlenecks undermining credit flow to the private sector in mutualism with agricultural productivity.

The commercial banks should give more credit to private sector to mutually benefit the agricultural sector and the banking sector. The governments of the CEMAC economies should expand funding into the capital market which considerably boosts agricultural productivity.

Studies’ results on the impact of bank credit on agricultural productivity are not conclusive. The studies demonstrate diverse outcomes which are debatable. The results are conflicting; some reveal positive impacts, some show negative impacts and others indicate U-shape behaviour. Hence, research is required to fill the lacuna.

The purpose of this paper is to examine if credit rationing persists even in the era of financial liberalization, the extent to which individual, firm and loan characteristics influence the rationing behavior of commercial banks and whether the agricultural sector is discriminated against in the commercial bank credit market.

The study employed a probit model with marginal effects and a generalized Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition estimation on a randomly selected data of 1,239 entrepreneurs from eight commercial banks’ credit records about their individual, firm and loan characteristics.

The study revealed that credit rationing persists and that applying for a relatively longer payment period, providing collateral and guarantor, being illiterate, being relatively older and being in the agricultural sector increases the likelihood of being credit rationed, while having some relationship with the bank, having non-mandatory savings and applying from a bank with relatively high interest rates reduce the likelihood of being credit rationed. The study also revealed a credit gap of 17.77 percent and a positive discrimination against borrowers in the agricultural sector as the gap was largely being influenced by unexplained factors.

The research was intended to cover a large number of commercial banks in Ghana. However, most of the banks were unwilling to provide such information about their borrowers; hence, the research was limited to only eight commercial banks who provided the author with the information needed for the study.

The study concludes that policies that enhance human capital, women, and older access to credit and agricultural-oriented financial services and others, will go a long way to reduce rationing and increase access to credit, especially to the agricultural sector.

The research proposes the use of group lending as a form of collateral and monitoring to ease risks and default, and hence supports sustainable funding to increase access and outreach.

The paper looks at the comprehensive way about the various factors determining credit rationing in that it considers not only the individual, economic/firm and loan characteristics but also the extent to which discrimination toward the agricultural sector exists in the commercial banks credit market.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of informal credit access on agricultural productivity in rural Ghana.

Data sets from the Ghana Feed the Future baseline survey involving a total sample of 2,437 rural farm households were used. In order to address the problem of endogeneity and sample selectivity bias, the endogenous switching regression (ESR) model was employed to examine whether rural farm households’ with access to informal credit and those without access differ in terms of their productivity levels and whether access to informal credit affects agricultural productivity.

Estimates from the ESR show that access to informal credit significantly promotes agricultural productivity. Specifically, farmers with access to informal credit were able to achieve a yield of 48.42 kg/ha more than their counterparts without informal credit access. In terms of the counterfactual, farmers without informal credit access would have increased their yield by 57.61 kg/ha if they were to have access to informal credit.

The study was restricted to the savannah ecological zone of Ghana. This limits the extent of generalisation of results.

This study provides a rigorous econometric analysis of the impacts of access to informal credit on agricultural productivity in rural Ghana. The study contributes to the current debate on the link between access to informal credit and agricultural productivity and provides valuable input for policymakers.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the impact of short-term loan (STL) vs long-term loan (LTL) on wheat productivity of small farms in Sindh, Pakistan.

The econometric estimation is based on cross-sectional data collected in 2016 from 18 villages in three districts, i.e. Shikarpur, Sukkur and Shaheed Benazirabad, Sindh, Pakistan. The sample data set consist of 180 wheat farmers. The collected data were analyzed through different econometric techniques like Cobb–Douglas production function and Instrumental variables (two-stage least squares) approach.

This study reconfirmed that agricultural credit has a positive and highly significant effect on wheat productivity, while the short-term loan has a stronger effect on wheat productivity than the long-term loan. The reasons behind the phenomenon may be the significantly higher usage of agricultural inputs like seeds of improved variety and fertilizers which can be transformed into the wheat yield in the same year. However, the LTL users have significantly higher investments in land preparation, irrigation and plant protection, which may lead to higher wheat production in the coming years.

In the present study, only those wheat farmers were considered who obtained agricultural loans from formal financial institutions like Zarai Taraqiati Bank Limited and Khushhali Bank. However, in the rural areas of Sindh, Pakistan, a considerable proportion of small-scale farmers take credit from informal financial channels. Therefore future researchers should consider the informal credits as well.

This is the first paper to examine the effects of agricultural credit on wheat productivity of small farms in Sindh, Pakistan. This paper will be an important addition to the emerging literature regarding effects of credit studies.

The paper analyzes the response of agricultural value added to credit and real interest rate shocks in the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) and make a short-term comparative effect analysis of credit granted to the agricultural sector on agricultural value added among member countries.

First, in order to estimate impulse response functions (IRFs) and study shocks, a panel VAR model is used. Second the paper uses an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model with the associated error correction model to make a comparative analysis of the effect of agricultural credit on agricultural value added in the WAEMU.

Results shows that: (1) credit stimulates agricultural value added only in the medium and long term; (2) in the case of WAEMU, credit only becomes a means of lifting the constraint of capital underutilization after three years; (3) short-term credit granted to agriculture in WAEMU has a weak and differentiated effect on agricultural value added from one country to another.

It is imperative to implement a policy of lowering real short-term interest rates. Moreover, a monetary policy that favors direct financing of agriculture to the detriment of that oriented toward market financing is to be prioritized.

The originality of this paper is that it makes the link between macroeconomics and agriculture. It shows how the monetary instrument can be manipulated to improve the performance of agriculture. Actually, in WAEMU, the financing of agriculture is provided by the market. This paper proposes a new approach which is direct financing. The paper offers possibilities for the coordination of agricultural policies in the WAEMU.

This study investigates the short-run and long-run impacts of agricultural credit on Vietnam's agricultural GDP over the period 2004:Q4–2016:Q4, with the incorporation of agricultural labor, public investment and rainfall as important determinants of agricultural GDP.

This study applies the indicator saturation (IS) break tests and the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds test with structural breaks to examine the credit–agricultural performance nexus. The causal relationships among variables are explored through the Toda–Yamamoto Granger causality test.

The results indicate that agricultural credit positively influences agricultural GDP in both the short-run and long-run. A unidirectional causal relationship running from credit to agricultural GDP is confirmed. The results also discover the positive and significant effects of labor and rainfall on agricultural GDP in the long-run.

The results imply that the government should focus on expanding agricultural credit as well as enhancing the efficiency of agricultural credit. Furthermore, formal credit institutions should be encouraged to work closely with farmers and agricultural enterprises to offer flexible lending periods and amounts to meet the real situation of agricultural production.

This study is the first to examine the credit–agricultural performance relationship at the macro-level in Vietnam. Based on the empirical results, the study provides crucial implications for policymakers to optimize the effectiveness of agricultural credit and enhance nationwide agricultural performance.

The credit of agricultural product quality and safety reflects the ability of the main actors involved in the supply chain to provide reliable agricultural products to consumers. To fundamentally solve the problem of agricultural product quality and safety, it is worth studying how to make the credit awareness and integrity self-discipline of the supply chain agriculture-related subjects strengthened and the role and value of credit supervision given full play. Starting from the application of blockchain in the agricultural product supply chain, this paper aims to investigate the main factors affecting the credit regulation of agricultural product quality.

Using the DEMATEL-ISM (decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory–interpretative structural modeling) method, we analyze the credit influencing factors of agricultural quality and safety empowered by blockchain technology, find the causal relationship between the crucial influencing factors and deeply explore the hierarchical transmission relationship between the influencing factors. Then, the path analysis in structural equation modeling is utilized to verify and measure the significance and effect value of the transmission relationship among the crucial influencing factors of credit regulation.

The results show that the quality and safety credit regulation of agricultural products is influenced by a combination of direct and deep influencing factors. Long-term stable cooperative relationship, Quality and safety credit evaluation, Supply chain risk control ability, Quality and safety testing, Constraints of the smart contract are the main influence path of blockchain embedded in agricultural product supply chain quality and safety credit supervision.

Credit supervision is an important means to improve the ability and level of social governance and standardize the market order. From the perspective of blockchain embedded in the agricultural supply chain, the regulatory body is transformed from the product body to the supply chain body. Take the credit supervision of supply chain subjects as the basis of agricultural product quality supervision. With the help of blockchain technology to improve the effectiveness of agricultural product quality and safety credit supervision, credit supervision is used to constrain and incentivize the behavior of agricultural subjects.

This work examines the impact of institutional agricultural credit on crop productivity of some major crops such as paddy, cotton, wheat and pulses for small and marginal farmers across various social groups.

The cross-sectional field data on socio economic variables was collected from three Indian states from about 400 small and marginal farmers across various social groups using multi-stage stratified random and purposive sampling through a structured questionnaire by interviewing. The method of propensity score matching (PSM) was employed to calculate average treatment effect (ATE) and average treatment effect on the treated (ATET) by categorising sample farmers as treatment group and control group where crop productivity was considered as outcome variable and access to institutional credit was considered as treatment variable.

The PSM estimates reveal that ATE and ATET for all the selected crops are found to be significantly higher for the treated group vis-à-vis non-treated group suggesting that institutional agricultural credit has a statistically and significant positive impact on the crop productivity.

Similar study can be extended for more crops and across regions in India for a universal coverage.

The agricultural credit policy of India has been to increase the access and availability of institutional farm credit. This has led to in general increase in the flow of formal farm credit to agricultural sector. However, the impact of institutional credit and crop productivity especially for small and marginal farmers across social groups is not well recognized in India using field data. Accordingly, this field data study contributes to the existing research by providing fresh evidence from field across social groups for both kharif and rabi crops using recent survey data from small and marginal farmers which has important policy implications.