Female Ownership of Firms and Regulation Experience

João Pedro Bastos and Jamie Bologna Pavlik

Journal of Development Studies, 2024, vol. 60, issue 9, 1412-1434

Abstract: The presence of gender disparity in de jure rules across the world is relatively well-known. Many studies show that this disparity is detrimental to female labor participation. Our focus is different in that we examine whether firms with females amongst ownership experience elevated time costs and burdens associated with government regulations relative to their male-owned counterparts. In this sense, we are interested in both de facto and de jure differences in governmental regulation. Using firm-level data and two alternative matching methods, our results suggest that firms with at least one female owner report that senior management spends a larger percentage of their time dealing with regulations. We also find that construction permits take approximately 4–7 days longer to obtain for these same firms. Lastly, we find that female-owned firms perceive labor regulations to be a larger obstacle to business operations. In all cases, these effects tend to be largest in countries with the most disparity in de jure rules. However, the gap remains even in the most de jure equal countries.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00220388.2024.2348552 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jdevst:v:60:y:2024:i:9:p:1412-1434

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/FJDS20

DOI: 10.1080/00220388.2024.2348552

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Development Studies is currently edited by Howard White, Oliver Morrissey and Ken Shadlen

More articles in Journal of Development Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().