Higher domestic credit strongly aligns with greater export capacity across countries.
Comparing Net domestic credit (current LCU) with Exports as a capacity to import (constant LCU) across 147 countries, 2014–2025.
- Rank correlation
- +0.91
- Holding size constant
- +0.86
- Countries compared
- 147
- Period
- 2014–2025
What might link these
Domestic credit may fuel business expansion, including export-oriented industries, while export capacity reflects economic health. However, reverse causality or omitted factors like trade policies could blur interpretation.
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. Correlation alone doesn't prove that credit expansion *causes* higher export capacity.
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.