In this paper, we address the question of whether the gender of a firm’s leader affects the cost of bank funding faced by small and medium enterprises in Europe. Using a large sample of observations of non-financial firms, during the years 2009–2013, we empirically test for the presence of discrimination, comparing female-led and male-led firms. After controlling for a rich set of variables and addressing potential endogeneity, our results show that i) female-led enterprises are more likely to face worse price conditions for bank financing compared to their male-led counterparts and, ii) firms whose leadership changes from female to male are more likely to benefit from an improvement in interest rate levels. This evidence is robust to different model specifications and various methodological approaches. The existence of such bias in the credit markets highlights the need of policy measures addressing female-led businesses, thus reducing their bank financing burdens and enhancing their entrepreneurial opportunities

We analyze whether the introduction of the bail‐in tool in January 2016 affected the pricing of Italian bank bonds. Using a unique dataset of 1,798 fixed‐rate bonds issued during the period 2013–2016, we find an increase of the spread at issuance of bail‐inable bonds compared to non‐bail‐inable bonds. This increase also depends on the intrinsic characteristics of each bank. Large institutions, banks with lower ratings, profitability, capitalization, and higher liquidity faced a higher cost of issuing bail‐inable bonds. Overall, our results seem to support the hypothesis of an improved market discipline for the bank bond primary market.

We examine the persistence of returns on Bitcoin at different parts on the return distributions through the use of the quantile autoregressive (QAR) models. We find lower quantiles of the daily return distribution and upper quantiles of the weekly return distribution to exhibit positive dependence with past returns. The evidence points to overreaction in the Bitcoin market: investors overreact during days of sharp declines in the Bitcoin price and during weeks of market rallies.

We test the existence of possible gender biases affecting firm behavior in demanding and obtaining bank credit using a cross‐country sample of European small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). We show consistent evidence that female‐led firms are more likely than their male counterparts to refrain from applying for loans. When they apply, female‐led enterprises do not seem to face gender discrimination from the lender. Interestingly, however, signs of gender bias appear to arise during the upside phase of the economy. Overall, our study provides support for policy actions aimed at reducing the frictions faced by women‐led SMEs when accessing credit markets.

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