Gender Gap in Debt Renegotiation
研究巴西法庭内重组案例发现，男性主导的债权人更可能拒绝女性债务人提出的重组方案，这种性别歧视可能导致效率损失，但若男性债权人此前接触过成功的女性企业，拒绝差距会缩小。
We study the role of gender in corporate debt renegotiation. Using in-court reorganizations from Brazil, we find that male-led creditors are more likely to reject plans put forward by female-led debtors. Although we cannot definitively identify the underlying mechanism driving this pattern, our findings align more consistently with gender-based discrimination compared with alternative explanations. This behavior may be costly: Female-led debtors deliver higher recoveries under reorganization than under liquidation, implying that rejections potentially create deadweight losses. Supporting a miscalibrated-beliefs explanation, we observe that the gender-based rejection gap narrows when male creditors have prior exposure to successful female-led businesses, pointing to a potential path for mitigation. This paper was accepted by Bo Becker, finance. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2024.05802 .