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Does marriage equality promote credit access? Evidence from same-sex marriage laws

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  • Hagendorff, Jens
  • Nguyen, Duc Duy
  • Sila, Vathunyoo

Abstract

We show that following the legalization of same-sex marriage across US states, mortgage applications from same-sex borrowers are more likely to be denied relative to a matched sample of different-sex borrowers. Our findings are robust to using a stacked regression design and several approaches to account for compositional changes in the pool of mortgage applicants around same-sex legalization. FinTech lenders, which rely less on human loan officers, experience no change in the denial gap. Our results highlight information frictions between loan officers and same-sex borrowers as one channel for the increased denial gap between same-sex and different-sex applications.

Suggested Citation

  • Hagendorff, Jens & Nguyen, Duc Duy & Sila, Vathunyoo, 2022. "Does marriage equality promote credit access? Evidence from same-sex marriage laws," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:corfin:v:77:y:2022:i:c:s0929119922001584
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2022.102315
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Banks; Mortgages; Same-sex marriage;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
    • J12 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure
    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • K36 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - Family and Personal Law

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