Gender-Based Discrimination in Business Loan Markets
Abstract
The aim of this paper
is to examine the existence of discrimination against female owned sole
proprietorship firms in loan markets based on firm level cross country evidence
from EBRD countries. We examine discrimination in credit markets via
probability of a firm getting loan. In order to measure the discrimination we
also take into account the firms those are discouraged from borrowing as
dependent variable in addition to firms with female top managers. The results
of the probit analyses indicate higher mean values of rejection rates for
female firm owners’ credit applications, however this difference is not statistically
significant. As we control for the firm and country level differences in the
multivariate analysis, the significance of financial discrimination against
female owned firms mostly disappears. Additionally the innovative firms with
higher numbers of full time workers, and the firms with lower unpaid debts are
more likely to receive credits from financial institutions. Moreover the
probability of a firm having a rejected credit application is lower in
countries with higher gross domestic product per capita.
Keywords
Kaynakça
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