Does Gender Matter in Bank-Firm Relationships? Evidence from Small Business Lending

Abstract:     
In this paper we study the relevance of the gender of the contracting parties involved in lending. We show that female entrepreneurs face tighter access to credit, even though they do not pay higher interest rates. The effect is independent of the information available about the borrower and holds if we control for unobservable individual effects. The gender of the loan officer is also important: we find that female officers are more risk-averse or less self-confident than male officers as they tend to restrict credit availability to new, unestablished borrowers more than their male counterparts.

Keywords: Gender-based discrimination, Female-owned enterprises, Loan officers

JEL Classifications: G21, G32, J16

Working Paper Series