Environmental Assurance, Gender, and Access to Finance: Evidence From SMEs
Publisher: International Review of Financial Analysis
Author(s): Dengjun Zhang, Nirosha H. Wellalage, and Viviana Fernandez
Date: 2022
Topics: Gender, Governance
When confronting credit constraints, female-led or -owned firms may adopt environmental assurances to increase access to credit. However, this depends on how financial institutions integrate gender diversity and environmental risk into the rating phase of their credit management system. This study uses comprehensive firm-level data from small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across 39 countries to uncover the relationship between environmental assurances and access to finance and to investigate whether this relationship varies by the gender composition of firms.