创业融资中的性别歧视：来自埃塞俄比亚的实验证据

Produced by the Research Support TeamAbstractThe Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about developmentissues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry thenames of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely thoseof the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank andits affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.Policy Research Working Paper11152This paper examines implicit gender bias in entrepreneurialfinancing by randomizing screenings of business investmentideas pitched in the format of the reality television showChigign Tobiya.Keeping business idea and pitch qualityconstant, the experiment randomizes whether a female ormale entrepreneur delivers the pitch across three differentbusiness sectors. The findings suggest that, on average,gender does not affect recommended investment; however,the sector matters. Some sectors attract greater investmentThis paper is a product of the Gender Innovation Lab, Africa Region. It is part of a larger effort by the World Bank toprovide open access to its research and make a contribution to development policy discussions around the world. PolicyResearch Working Papers are also posted on the Web at http://www.worldbank.org/prwp. The authors may be contactedat nbuehren@worldbank.org and spapineni@worldbank.org. A verified reproducibility package for this paper is availableathttp://reproducibility.worldbank.org, clickherefor direct access. POLIWORTRANSPARENTANALYSIS than others. Our findings are consistent with discrimina-tion against women in traditionally male-dominated sectorsand discrimination against men in female-dominated sec-tors. Men are perceived as better negotiators and leadersin sectors that attract higher investment. These are alsothe sectors in which women are typically underrepresented.Exposure to women in leadership positions and informa-tion provided during the screenings can increase investmentin women’s businesses.ESEARCHGPAPERS CYRKIN Gender Discrimination in Entrepreneurial Finance:Experimental Evidence from Ethiopia∗Niklas Buehren†Sreelakshmi Papineni‡Gender, Entrepreneurship, Firms, Finance[JEL] C93, D14, D25, J16, L25, L26, O12This paper is a product of the World Bank Africa Gender Innovation Lab, within the office of the AfricaRegion Chief Economist (AFRCE). The project was conducted in partnership with Renew Capital and amicrofinance institution in Ethiopia. We thank Maria Emilia Cucagna for excellent research assistance, andAlemayehu Woldu Gedrago and Yemsrach Kinfey Edey for expert field and relationship management. We alsothank Rachel Coleman and Toni Weis for invaluable project support and Laura Davis who led the productionof the videos. We are grateful to Global Affairs Canada (GAC) under the Innovations in Financing WomenEntrepreneurs (IFWE) project, as well as the World Bank Umbrella Fund for Gender Equality (UFGE)and other World Bank sources for funding. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in thispaper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the World Bank andits affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments theyrepresent. The study is registered on the AEA RCT registry at https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.9064-1.1World Bank,nbuehren@worldbank.orgWorld Bank,spapineni@worldbank.org (Corresponding author) ∗†‡ 1IntroductionGender-based discrimination is often emphasized to help explain a persistent gender gap inaccess to finance and firm performance (Hardy and Kagy, 2018; World Bank, 2019; Buehrenet al., 2019; Delecourt and Ng, 2020; Fang et al., 2022).Both debt and equity financingdisproportionately flow to male-led firms which limits the potential of female entrepreneurs togrow their firms (World Bank, 2021).1For instance, in credit markets, despite an expansionof microfinance loans to support female-led enterprises (Aterido, Beck and Iacovone, 2011),women entrepreneurs are often disadvantaged with loan terms deemed insufficient to promotefirm growth (Meager, 2019). Similarly, in equity markets, a gender gap in venture capital(VC) and private equity (PE) investments is observed with only 2% of all VC in the UnitedStates and Europe allocated to female-led businesses (PitchBook, 2023); and an estimated6% of VC going to female-led firms in Sub-Saharan Africa (IFC, 2019).Women’s lowerparticipation in the funding pool is often attributed to inaccurate perceptions and over-evaluation of risk due to gender discrimination (e.g., Bartos et al., 2023; Miller et al., 2023;Alibhai et al., 2019). In this paper we measure gender discri