Take Care of Home and Family, Honey, and Let Me Take Care of the Money - Gender Bias and Credit Market Barriers for Female Entrepreneurs

We identify the causal effect of gender bias on access to finance. We extract an exogenous measure of gender bias from survey responses by descendants of US immigrants on questions about the role of women in society. We then investigate a detailed dataset on small business firms from 17 countries and find that the inherited component of gender bias is associated with gender-based discrimination in the credit market of the immigrants' country of origin. In particular, in countries with higher gender bias, female-owned firms are more frequently discouraged from applying for bank credit and are more reliant on informal finance.

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