Female ownership, firm age and firm growth: a study of South Asian firms

This study investigates the role of female ownership, and its moderating role in shaping the effect of firm age and access to finance on firm growth. We use a sample of 7203 firms in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan and a mixed effects model, where both firm and regional characteristics are included....

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Bibliographic Details
Published inAsia Pacific journal of management Vol. 38; no. 3; pp. 825 - 855
Main Authors Belitski, Maksim, Desai, Sameeksha
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York Springer US 01.09.2021
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Business and Management
Business growth
Business ownership
Management
Productivity
Women owned businesses
Bangladesh
Pakistan
India
South Asia
Women
Productivity
Owner
Employment growth
Firm age
South Asia
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Summary:This study investigates the role of female ownership, and its moderating role in shaping the effect of firm age and access to finance on firm growth. We use a sample of 7203 firms in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan and a mixed effects model, where both firm and regional characteristics are included. First, we test how women’s ownership affects two measures of firm growth (employment growth and Birch Index). Second, we investigate how women’s ownership influences the relationship between firm age and access to finance for firm growth. Our results indicate that gender is an important determinant of firm growth, but this is closely tied to firm age, access to finance, and varies with region and country. We conduct a robustness check using firm productivity instead of growth and we find largely opposite results for productivity compared to employment growth ownership. We also identify questions that emerge from our findings for managers and policy makers interested in women-owned firms.
ISSN:0217-4561
1572-9958
DOI:10.1007/s10490-019-09689-7