Discriminatory Lending: Evidence from Bankers in the Lab
通过对334名土耳其信贷员的实验，发现尽管贷款批准率无性别差异，但女性申请者被要求提供担保人的概率高出26%，且歧视集中在年轻、缺乏经验及有性别偏见的信贷员中。
We implement a lab-in-the-field experiment with 334 Turkish loan officers to document gender discrimination in small business lending and unpack mechanisms. Officers review multiple real-life loan applications in which we randomize applicant gender. While unconditional approval rates are the same, officers are 26 percent more likely to require a guarantor when we present the same application as coming from a female instead of a male entrepreneur. A causal forest algorithm to estimate heterogeneous treatment effects reveals that discrimination is concentrated among young, inexperienced, and gender-biased officers. Discrimination mainly affects female loan applicants in male-dominated industries, indicating how financial frictions can perpetuate entrepreneurial gender segregation across sectors.