This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Abstract: This paper assesses whether there is a gender gap in the use of financial services by businesses and individuals in Sub-Saharan Africa. We show the existence of an unconditional gender gap, as the absolute use of financial services is higher for males than females. However, when key observable characteristics of the enterprises or individuals are taken into account the gender gap disappears. In the case of enterprises, we explain our finding with differences in key characteristics and a poential selection bias -females owned ones are smaller, younger and less likely to run sole proprietorships than men, furthermore these are more likely to innovate and more prevalent in sectors that tend to rely less on access to external finance. In the case of individuals, the lower use of formal financial services by women can be explained by gender gaps in other dimensions related to the use of financial services, such as their lower level of income and education, and by their household and employment status. Exploring the reasons for not applying or being unbanked shows that traditional bank barriers such as higher interest rates, lack of formal income or job are more binding for females than for males. This suggests that, conditional on their observable characteristics, females do not have inherently lower demand nor that there is taste-based discrimination. Permanent repository linkJEL Classification: G21; J16

Using data on more than 56,000 enterprises in 90 countries, this study finds that objective conditions in the business environment vary substantially across firms of different sizes and that there are important nonlinearities in their impact on employment growth. The study focuses on four areas: access to finance, business regulations, corruption, and infrastructure. The results, particularly on the impacts of finance and corruption on growth, depend on whether and how the analysis accounts for the possible endogeneity of the business environment. Controlling for endogeneity revises the finding that small firms benefit most from access to finance, particularly for sources of finance associated with investment and growth. The findings are also sensitive to how “small” is defined. Differentiating micro (fewer than 10 employees) from other small firms shows that, while small firms can be disadvantaged in such an environment, micro firms tend to be proportionally less affected by a weak business climate—and, on occasion, it can help them to grow. Overall, allowing different size classifications provides insights into the impact of the business environment that are lost in more aggregate analyses.

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. The views and interpretations in this document are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Inter-American Development Bank, or to any individual acting on its behalf. This paper may be freely reproduced provided credit is given to the Research Department, InterAmerican Development Bank. Terms of use: Documents inThe Research Department (RES) produces a quarterly newsletter, IDEA (Ideas for Development in the Americas), as well as working papers and books on diverse economic issues. To obtain a complete list of RES publications, and read or download them please visit our web site at: http://www.iadb.org/res. 3 AbstractUsing firm level data on 70,000 enterprises in 107 countries, this paper finds important effects of access to finance, business regulations, corruption, and to a lesser extent, infrastructure bottlenecks in explaining patterns of job creation at the firm level. The paper focuses on how the impact of the investment climate varies across sizes of firms. The differences across size categories come from two sources. First, objective conditions of the business environment do vary systematically by firm types. Micro and small firms have less access to formal finance, pay more in bribes than do larger firms, and face greater interruptions in infrastructure services. Larger firms spend significantly more time dealing with officials and red tape. Second, even controlling for these differences in objective conditions, there is evidence of significant non-linearities in their impact on employment growth. The results suggest strong composition effects: A weak business environment shifts downward the size distribution of firms. In the case of finance and business regulations this occurs by reducing the employment growth of all firms, particularly micro and small firms. On the other hand, corruption and poor access to infrastructure reduce employment growth by affecting the growth of medium size and large firms. With significant differences between firms with less than 10 employees and SMEs, these results indicate significant reforms are needed to spur micro firms to grow into the ranks of the SMEs.4

Seguro Popular (SP) was introduced in 2002 to provide health insurance to the 50 million Mexicans without Social Security. This paper tests whether the program has had unintended consequences, distorting workers' incentives to operate in the informal sector. The analysis examines the impact of SP on disaggregated labor market decisions, taking into account that program coverage depends not only on the individual's employment status, but also on that of other household members. The identification strategy relies on the variation in SP's rollout across municipalities and time, with the difference-in-difference estimation controlling for household fixed effects. The paper finds that SP lowers formality by 0.4-0.7 percentage points, with adjustments largely occurring within a few years of the program's introduction. Rather than encouraging exit from the formal sector, SP is associated with a 3.1 percentage point reduction (a 20 percent decline) in the inflow of workers into formality. Income effects are also apparent, with significantly decreased flows out of unemployment and lower labor force participation. The impact is larger for those with less education, in larger households, and with somebody else in the household guaranteeing Social Security coverage. However, workers pay for part of these benefits with lower wages in the informal sector.

This article examines how gender may account for productivity gaps across enterprises. First, using data from six countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, the article demonstrates that the extent and significance of any productivity gap by gender depends critically on the criteria used to classify an enterprise. Using a definition of 'female participation in ownership,' there are few differences in average performance measures. However, a 12% productivity gap emerges when a tighter definition, based on decision-making control, is used. Second, the article examines which entrepreneurial characteristics (education, management skills, experience and the motivation for being an entrepreneur) are most associated with higher productivity. The findings reveal that there are some gender gaps in the prevalence of these characteristics, but that these do not account for the overall gender productivity gap. Rather, while women benefit as much as men from education and management skills, there are non-linear impacts by gender in the benefits of having a family background in entrepreneurship; sons rather than daughters benefit from having a father that was an entrepreneur or from joining a family enterprise.