@article{21d671d86f0142628437052b071b2650,
title = "It's getting crowded in here: Experimental evidence of demand constraints in the gender profit gap",
abstract = "This article considers market-level contributors to the well-documented gender profit gap among microentrepreneurs. We combine data from a garment-making firm census and market research survey in Ghana, uncovering a gender gap in the market-size-to-firm ratio and observing disproportionate self-reports of 'not enough customers' from female owners. We develop a simple model and discuss implications of potential gender differences in demand constraints. As experimental corroboration, we show that female-owned firms expand production and experience profit increases in response to random demand shocks, while male-owned firms do not. Nationally representative data echoes our experimental findings, showing more crowding in female-dominated industries.",
author = "Morgan Hardy and Gisella Kagy",
note = "Funding Information: For helpful comments and suggestions, we are grateful to the referees, David Blakeslee, Raquel Fern{\'a}ndez, Andrew Foster, Dustin Frye, Rachel Heath, Jamie McCasland, Martin Rotemberg, Christopher Woodruff and seminar participants at Vassar College, New York University Abu Dhabi, Vanderbilt University, University of Washington, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the Entrepreneurship and Private Enterprise Development (EPED) in Emerging Economies Conference, The International Population Conference, The International Growth Center—Private Enterprise Development in Low-Income Countries Conference, The American Economics Association Annual Meeting and The Center for the Study of African Economics Conference, for helpful comments and suggestions. We also thank Lois Aryee, Robert Obenya, Charles Sefenu, Yani Tyskerud, Edna Kobbinah and Innovations for Poverty Action-Ghana for excellent field assistance, and Osman Mutawakil for collaborating on the design of the weaving technique used in the demand shock. We also thank April Lonchar and Mina Kim for excellent research assistance. This research was supported by funding from PEDL, 3ie, USAID, The World Bank, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Barrett Hazeltine Fellowship for Graduate Research in Entrepreneurship, the Watson Institute for International Studies and the Population Studies Center at Brown University. All errors are our own. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2020 Royal Economic Society. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions please contact journals.permissions@oup.com. Copyright: Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.",
year = "2021",
doi = "10.1093/EJ/UEAA040",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "130",
pages = "2272--2290",
journal = "Economic Journal",
issn = "0013-0133",
publisher = "Wiley-Blackwell",
number = "631",
}