Are majority-female-owned firms more susceptible to bribery solicitations?

Olayinka Oyekola, Martha Omolo and Olapeju Ogunmokun
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Martha Omolo: Department of Economics, University of Exeter
Olapeju Ogunmokun: Faculty of Business and Law, De Montfort University

No 2311, Discussion Papers from University of Exeter, Department of Economics

Abstract: The answer is No. Our evidence derives from leveraging international firm-level data to examine the statistical importance of gender composition of ownership as a determinant of bribery solicitations. Our data are for 18,240 firms in 18 industries across 110 countries. For this group of firms, we find that female involvement in ownership is unimportant for explaining which firms are more susceptible to bribery solicitations. However, we find that majority-female-owned firms differ significantly from majority-male-owned firms in terms of their experiences of bribery transactions. Specifically, we establish that firms with majority female ownership are less susceptible to bribery solicitations, when compared to their counterparts with minority female ownership. Additionally, we find that all fifteen sources of business obstacles that we consider are positively related to bribery solicitations. Using an interaction model, we observe that the benefits accruing to majority-female-owned firms in terms of reduced bribery solicitations are diminished in the presence of some perceived business obstacles, namely: corruption, political instability, tax administration, and transportation. Our results, which are robust to several specification checks, including endogeneity tests, add to the gender and corruption literature.

Keywords: gender; ownership composition; female-owned firms; bribery; corruption; business obstacles (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D73 J16 L2 O17 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-10-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec and nep-gen
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