Gendered Access to Finance: The Role of Team Formation, Idea Quality, and Implementation Constraints in Business Evaluations

Vojtěch Bartoš, Silvia Castro, Kristina Czura and Timm Opitz
Additional contact information
Silvia Castro: LMU Munich
Timm Opitz: Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition

No 473, Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series from CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition

Abstract: We analyze gender discrimination in entrepreneurship finance. Access to finance is crucial for entrepreneurial success, yet constraints for women are particularly pronounced. We structurally unpack whether loan officers evaluate business ideas and implementation constraints differently for male and female entrepreneurs, both as individual entrepreneurs or in entrepreneurial teams. In a lab-in-the-field experiment with Ugandan loan officers, we document gender discrimination of individual female entrepreneurs, but no gender bias in the evaluation of entrepreneurial teams. Our results suggest that the observed bias is not driven by animus against female entrepreneurs but rather by differential beliefs about women’s entrepreneurial ability or implementation constraints in running a business. Policies aimed at team creation for start-up enterprises may have an additional benefit of equalizing access to finance and ultimately stimulating growth.

Keywords: access to finance; gender bias; entrepreneurship; lab-in-the-field (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 G21 J16 L25 L26 O16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-12-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban, nep-cfn, nep-ent, nep-exp, nep-lab and nep-sbm
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Related works:
Working Paper: Gendered Access to Finance: The Roles of Team Formation, Idea Quality, and Implementation Constraints in Business Evaluations (2024)
Working Paper: Gendered Access to Finance: The Role of Team Formation, Idea Quality, and Implementation Constraints in Business Evaluations (2023)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rco:dpaper:473

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