Thesis--University of Pennsylvania. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [205]-208).

Thesis--University of Pennsylvania. / Bibliography: p. [205]-208.

Thesis (M.S.)--Florida State University, 2006. / Advisor: James Cobbe, Florida State University, College of Social Sciences, Program in International Affairs. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed June 7, 2006). Document formatted into pages; contains x, 70 pages. Includes bibliographical references.

In the first chapter of this dissertation, I ask what role bank presence plays in improving health of households. To explore this question, I use a policy of the Reserve Bank of India from 2005 that incentivizes banks to set up new branches in underbanked districts, defined as having a population-to-branch ratio larger than the national average. In a regression discontinuity design, I compare households in districts just above and just below the national average. Six years after the policy introduction, households in treatment districts are a third less likely to be affected by an illness in a month. They miss fewer days of work or school due to an illness and have lower medical expenses. Ten years after the policy was introduced, I observe persistently lower morbidity rates, higher vaccination rates, and lower risks associated with pregnancies. I provide evidence that two previously understudied aspects of banking contribute to the effect: households gain access to health insurance and health care providers gain access to credit. In equilibrium, I observe an increase in healthcare demand and supply. In the second chapter of this dissertation, co-authored with Naz Koont, we provide first empirical evidence that consumer peer effects matter for banks’ deposit demand. Using a novel measure that depicts for each county how exposed peers are to a specific bank in a given year, we tightly identify the causal effect of peer exposure on deposit demand through a fixed effects identification strategy. We address key empirical challenges such as time-invariant homophily. We find that a one percent increase in a bank’s peer exposure leads to a 0.05 percent increase in deposit market share. This effect has become stronger over time with the rise of the internet and social media, which facilitate cross-county communication. Peer exposure is especially relevant for smaller banks and customers that have access to the internet.