Abstract
Based on a broad body of literature that investigates the determinants of gender discrimination in the credit market, we provide some descriptive evidence on women’s access to credit by employing a set of financial viability and socio-economic data for a sample of 11 European countries after the global financial crisis (2009–2013). From our preliminary analysis it emerges that, on the demand side, female firms apply for bank loans less than male firms, and one of the relevant determinants for their decision not to apply is the fear of rejection. On the supply side, when applying, female firms face a higher rate of rejection or receive less bank financing than male firms. No general patterns seem to emerge when crossing micro and macro data, even though at the country level, we detect some correspondence between banking system characteristics, socio-institutional indicators and gender differences in access to formal credit.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Social capital can be defined as the advantages and opportunities that people obtain through membership to certain communities or resources of individuals that emerge through social ties (for a wide discussion of the different dimensions of social capital see Coleman 1994 and, more recently, De Blasio et al. 2012).
- 3.
For the Central-Eastern European countries, the ECB SAFE data are available only for Slovenia and Slovakia, but on two waves.
- 4.
The total number of interviewed firms is 61,276.
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Acknowledgments
We thank the ECB for the use of data from the ECB SAFE Survey on access to finance of small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) in the Euro area. Additionally, we thank Sara Colella for assistance with the data. Stefania P. S. Rossi gratefully acknowledges research grants from the Autonomous Region of Sardinia, Legge Regionale 2007, N. 7 [Grant Number CRP-59890, year 2012].
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Galli, E., Rossi, S.P.S. (2016). Bank Credit Access and Gender Discrimination: Some Stylized Facts. In: Rossi, S., Malavasi, R. (eds) Financial Crisis, Bank Behaviour and Credit Crunch. Contributions to Economics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17413-6_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17413-6_8
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