This paper studies gender discrimination against entrepreneurs by financial institutions. Based on the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS) that covers firms in several countries of Western Europe as well as in the transition countries of Eastern Europe, our analysis suggests that femalemanaged firms are less likely to obtain a bank loan compared with male-managed counterparts. In addition, there is some evidence that female entrepreneurs are charged higher interest rates when loan applications are approved. Disaggregation of the sample by country groups suggests that these results are driven by firms in the least financially developed countries of the region.

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This article investigates the influence of family involvement on firm performance in an emerging market economy. Using a panel of 217 Polish companies from 1997 to 2005, the authors find an inverted U-shaped relationship between the share of family ownership and firm performance. The data also reveal that firms with family CEOs are likely to outperform their counterparts that have nonfamily CEOs. The results take into account the endogeneity of family ownership and are robust to a number of specification checks.

The paper investigates the link between the optimal level of non-financial firms' shortterm leverage and macroeconomic and idiosyncratic sources of uncertainty. We develop a structural model of a firm's value maximization problem that predicts a negative relationship between uncertainty and optimal level of borrowing. This proposition is tested using a panel of non-financial US firms drawn from the COMPUSTAT quarterly database covering the period 1993-2003. The estimates confirm that as either form of uncertainty increases firms decrease their levels of short-term leverage. This effect is stronger for macroeconomic uncertainty than for idiosyncratic uncertainty.