Paper short abstract:

It examines microcredit's impact on women's entrepreneurship in Bangladesh. An IV technique is used for correcting endogeneity. Results indicate that microcredit has more positive effects on men's than women's entrepreneurship, but women borrowers tend to pass the loans to male household members.

Paper long abstract:

This paper intends to assess the impact of access to microcredit on women’s entrepreneurship in Bangladesh. The descriptive statistics and multivariate techniques have been used to achieve the objective of the paper. The study uses the Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) 2010 dataset. The HIES 2010 survey covers 12,240 households from all districts in the country. Considering the endogeneity in the microcredit program participation of women, the study uses an instrumental variables technique (IV method) to assess the impact of access to microcredit on the entrepreneurial status of women. After adjustment for the endogeneity, the results from the multivariate analysis indicate that access to microcredit has a significant and positive impact on women’s entrepreneurship. It also has a significant and positive impact on men’s entrepreneurship and the marginal effects of access to microcredit are stronger on men’s entrepreneurship than on women’s entrepreneurship. The results also indicate that women borrowers handover their microcredit loans to adult male household members rather than using those loans by themselves.