We study how financing non-traditional local activities, conceived here as a proxy for activity diversification, is associated with economic growth. We use municipality-level data from Brazil, a country with large geographical, social, and economic disparities observed across its more than 5500 municipalities. We find that finance to non-traditional local activities associates with higher municipal economic growth, suggesting a positive externality between the non-traditional and traditional sectors. Using large natural disasters in Brazil as sources of unexpected negative events, we find that this association between financing non-traditional local activities and economic growth becomes negative in times of distress. We find that traditional local sectors are more affected than non-traditional sectors following a natural disaster. Precisely because of the non-traditional sector’s dependence on the traditional sector, our results suggest that municipalities should restrengthen their traditional activities during adverse conditions.

我们研究了资助非传统的本地活动（在这里被视为活动多样化的代表）与经济增长之间的关系。我们使用来自巴西的直辖市一级的数据，该国在5500多个直辖市中观察到巨大的地理，社会和经济差异。我们发现，对非传统地方活动的融资与较高的市政经济增长相关，这表明非传统和传统部门之间存在积极的外部性。利用巴西的大型自然灾害作为意外负面事件的根源，我们发现，在困难时期，为非传统的地方活动提供资金与经济增长之间的这种联系变得负面。我们发现自然灾害后，传统的地方部门比非传统的部门受到的影响更大。