Könsdiskriminering vid företagsöverlåtelser : Ett fältexperiment på den svenska marknaden för mindre företagsöverlåtelser

Sammanfattning: This study aims to examine whether women are being discriminated against at the initial contact of a small business transfer. Existing research shows that men dominate in entrepreneurship and that entrepreneurship is generally associated with being a man. Based on social psychological theory on gender stereotypes and economic theory on statistic discrimination we assumed that female buyers are discriminated against at the market for small business transfers. To study this, a pre-registered randomized field experiment was conducted in which we expressed interest in buying a business from fictional potential buyers to 906 business owners that had announced their business for sale on the Swedish marketplace Blocket. The gender of the fictional potential buyers was signaled through randomly assigned first names that are associated with being a man or a woman. We studied the share of messages that led to Response or Positive response from the sellers. Our results revealed that people selling their businesses are not less likely to respond to potential female buyers, meaning that women are not discriminated against at the initial contact of a business transfer. However, we did find that female buyers have a higher probability than male buyers of receiving a Positive response from a seller with a business in a female dominated industry. Corresponding advantage for male buyers compared to female buyers among sellers with businesses in male dominated industries could not be found. The experiment is the first to examine gender discrimination in the market for small business transfers.