No. 186 - Are female entrepreneurs better payers than men?

In this article we test whether Italian female entrepreneurs are more reliable payers than men, by carrying out a survival analysis of micro enterprises that utilize a credit for the first time in the period January 2005 to December 2008, and monitoring the quality of their exposure until December 2010. The data were drawn from the Bank of Italy's Central Credit Register, which provides information on the entire Italian population that has loans with the Italian banking system. We observed that female entrepreneurs are better payers than their male counterparts only because women tend to undertake activities in less risky sectors. Our analysis could also be considered as an indirect measure of whether female entrepreneurs experience discrimination when accessing the Italian credit market.