Comment on ?Female entrepreneurship, financial frictions and capital misallocation in the US?

• 成果类型: Editorial Material
• 署名作者: Klenow, Peter J.
• 署名单位: Stanford University; National Bureau of Economic Research
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF MONETARY ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3932
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jmoneco.2022.05.008
• 发表日期: 2022
• 页码: 119-122

摘要

Morazzoni and Sy provide novel evidence consistent with discrimination in lending to women-owned businesses, which may misallocate capital and reduce aggregate output. The authors utilize the Kauffman Foundation Firm Survey , which follows about 50 0 0 firms who entered in 20 04 up to 2011 (so up to 7 years of operation at most). The paper presents four key findings: center dot Only 23% of businesses in the sample are fully women-owned, compared to 59% who are fully men-owned, and 18% center dot The ratio of revenue to assets is 12% higher on average for women-owned businesses than for men-owned businesses center dot Women-owned businesses are 10 percentage points more likely to be turned down for a bank loan (controlling for other observables) center dot In a standard model of firm dynamics, eliminating the gaps in the rate of return to capital across women-owned vs. men-owned businesses would increase aggregate output by 3.8% I have five comments about this valuable paper, which concern 1. shares, 2. coverage, 3. trends, 4. whether the efficiency gains from eliminating discrimination could be a Pareto improvement (i.e., good for men as well as women), and 5. whether the results could reflect heterogeneous production elasticities rather than discrimination.