Financial Crisis and Female Entrepreneurship: Evidence from South Korea

Jungho Lee and Sunha Myong

Journal of Political Economy Macroeconomics, 2024, vol. 2, issue 4, 602 - 650

Abstract: We document a drastic increase in female-owned manufacturing firms in South Korea after the 1997 financial crisis. During the crisis, a major banking-sector reform was conducted, and many underperforming bank branches were forced to close down. Using a geographical variation of bank-branch closures during the reform, we show that the banking-sector reform resulted in a rise in female entrepreneurship. We present evidence that the closed-down bank branches preferred male-owned firms, despite female-owned firms exhibiting lower risks and higher returns. The banking-sector reform, although not explicitly aimed at addressing gender disparities, substantially benefited female entrepreneurs by improving efficiency in the financial market.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/732471 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/732471 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

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:ucp:jpemac:doi:10.1086/732471

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Political Economy Macroeconomics from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().