摘要：Exclusion from the mainstream financial world is a burden on the poor of
many countries. The proliferation of new mobile and online financial services, such
as e-banking, money transfers, and payment processing has the potential to provide
access to basic financial products and services to financially excluded people. The
purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of the growth of mobile phone
and Internet use on financial inclusion in the South Asian Association for Regional
Cooperation (SAARC) countries from 2004 to 2014. We applied principal component
analysis to construct a financial inclusion index that served as a proxy variable for the
accessibility of financial services in the SAARC countries. Using three different
models-the fixed effect, random effect, and panel correction standard errors modelsthis
study discovered a positive and significant relationship between the growth of
financial inclusion and expansion of both mobile phone and Internet services.
Moreover, an empirical study of the control variables showed that the levels of
income and education were positively associated with financial inclusion, whereas
the size of the rural population and unemployment were negatively related to
financial inclusion. In addition, the empirical estimates posit a unidirectional causal
flow from the growth of mobile and Internet services to expanded financial inclusion
in the SAARC countries.
关键词：Financial inclusion; Fixed effect; Random effect; Panel corrected standard errors; SAARC; B26; F36; F38; G2F
