Gender and banking: Are women better loan officers?
Beck,T.H.L. Behr,P. Guttler,A.
Beck,T.H.L.
Behr,P.
Guttler,A.
Abstract
Using a unique data set for a commercial bank in Albania, we analyze gender differences in loan officers’ performance. Loans screened and monitored by female loan officers have a lower likelihood to turn problematic than loans handled by male loan officers. This effect cannot be explained by borrower or loan officer selection or differences in screening, work load, and experience. However, while the performance gap always exists for female borrowers, female loan officers only gain a performance advantage with male borrowers with experience and do not have an advantage with borrowers that are legal entities. We therefore interpret this as suggestive evidence for female loan officers’ better capacity to build trust relationships with borrowers.
Description
Appeared earlier as CentER Discussion Paper 2009-063
Date
2013
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Publisher
Research Projects
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Keywords
SDG 5 - Gender Equality, SDG 8 - Decent Work and Economic Growth, SDG 17 - Partnerships for the Goals
Citation
Beck, T H L, Behr, P & Guttler, A 2013, 'Gender and banking : Are women better loan officers?', Review of Finance, vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 1279-1321. https://doi.org/10.1093/rof/rfs028