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The gender gap in access to finance: evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic
- Publication Year :
- 2022
- Publisher :
- US : Academic Press, 2022.
-
Abstract
- Refereed/Peer-reviewed Using gender as a theoretical framework, we analyse the dynamics of debt and equity financing during the COVID-19 pandemic for a cross-country sample of 8,921 private firms. We provide evidence of a slight gender bias in debt financing, with creditors favouring female entrepreneurs when dealing with cash flow problems during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find no evidence of gender bias in equity financing. The results are robust after controlling for a larger number of firm-specific characteristics and selection bias. We challenge the assumption of “gender-based discrimination” in the debt market, speculating that in the context of high uncertainty, prototypical forms of femininity may be advantageous as financial institutions seek to hedge their risk by favouring more conservative borrowers.
- Subjects :
- Selection bias
History
Polymers and Plastics
Creditor
media_common.quotation_subject
COVID-19
Context (language use)
Monetary economics
females
Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering
equity
Debt
Heckman model
Economics
Bond market
Access to finance
Cash flow
Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition
Business and International Management
Hedge (finance)
debt
Finance
media_common
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....d7fa0dd38d62cc5ae1170dbca8bcd86d