Higher private credit correlates with lower agriculture's GDP share
Comparing Domestic credit to private sector by banks (% of GDP) with Value Added (Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing) — Share of GDP Standard Local Currency, 2015 prices across 154 countries, 2024–2025.
- Rank correlation
- -0.57
- Holding size constant
- -0.42
- Countries compared
- 154
- Period
- 2024–2025
What might link these
Countries with more private credit may invest less in agriculture or have more diversified economies. A careful reader should note that correlation doesn't imply causation—reverse causality or omitted factors like industrialization could drive this.
Why this is not proof of anything
This is a correlation across countries, not an experiment. It cannot show that either indicator causes the other, and both may simply follow a third thing. The correlation could reflect broader economic development patterns rather than a direct link between these two indicators.
The second figure above repeats the measurement with national population and income held constant. It is the more conservative number: a relationship that largely disappears there was mostly telling you that larger, richer countries have more of most things.
How this was measured
Both indicators were ranked across every country reporting each, and the two rankings compared — ranks rather than raw values, because a handful of very large countries can otherwise manufacture a relationship on their own. The calculation is arithmetic over figures already published on this site; the commentary above is drafted from the two indicator names and the resulting coefficients.