This study investigates the role of religiousness - defined as a multidimensional set of religious beliefs, feelings, knowledge, and practice - on the likelihood for individuals to be entrepreneurs. We construct precise measures of both religiousness and entrepreneurship from the 2017 World...

This study shows that female role model encourages women-led firms to apply for a credit. Employing a sample of of 29,157 firms from 112 countries between 2009 and 2020, our results indicate that the exposure to a female political leader offsets the likelihood for woman-led firms to be...

We introduce the distinction between broad-scope trust and narrow-scope trust in banking. Broad-scope trust corresponds to trust toward a group in general (e.g., banks as a whole); narrow-scope trust toward a specific individual (e.g., bank–firm relationship). Using U.S. syndicated loans...

Although the role of loan officers in the credit process has been extensively discussed in the literature, their individual prejudices have been neglected. The literature on decision making relies on the assumption that all loan officers perceive and use information similarly, regardless of...

Trust towards banks plays a central role in theoretical literature. Diamond and Dybvig (J Polit Econ 91:401–419, 1983) argue that in a trustworthy environment banks can easily collect deposit foster banking activity and asset transformation. Diamond and Rajan (J Polit Econ 109:287–327, 2001)...

Literature points out that women are more discouraged compared to their male counterparts to apply for a loan. However, little is known about the influence exerted by a feminine business environment for women-led firms. Using a dataset of 8,966 firms from 96 countries, we find that...

Does a women-friendly legal environment help women to overcome discrimination in credit markets? By examining antidiscrimination laws and their implications for women-led businesses' access to credit in 124 countries, the current study differentiates an effect on discouragement (i.e., not asking...

Research suggests that sex-based grammatical systems in languages are associated with gender differences in economic behavior. This paper tests the hypothesis that language gender-marking has a gendered impact on borrower discouragement of entrepreneurs. Using a cross-country dataset of more...