 Microfinance and Gender: Is There a Glass Ceiling on Loan Size?Isabelle Agier and Ariane Szafarz ULB Institutional Repository from ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles Abstract: Most of the customers of microfinance institutions are female. But do men and women benefit from the same credit conditions? We investigate this issue by presenting an original model and testing its predictions on an exceptional database comprising 34,000 loan applications from a Brazilian microfinance institution. The model determines the optimal loan size fixed by a gender-biased lender, depending on the borrower’s creditworthiness and the intensity of the lender’s bias. The empirical analysis detects no gender bias in loan denial, but uncovers disparate treatment with regard to credit conditions. In particular, we find a “glass ceiling” effect. The gender gap in loan size increases disproportionately with respect to the scale of the borrower’s project. The results are insensitive to the loan officer’s gender. Keywords: microcredit; microfinance; gender discrimination; women entrepreneurs; Latin America; Brazil (search for similar items in EconPapers) Published in: World development (2013) v.42,p.165-181 There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ulb:ulbeco:2013/149090 Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from Access Statistics for this paper More papers in ULB Institutional Repository from ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles Contact information at EDIRC. |
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