Communication Frictions and the Gender Gap in Access to Credit

Last registered on September 11, 2026
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Communication Frictions and the Gender Gap in Access to Credit
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0017067
Initial registration date
October 22, 2025

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
October 23, 2025, 7:40 AM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated
September 11, 2026, 4:20 PM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

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Primary Investigator

Name
Navid Neshat
Affiliation
Tulane University
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Yongseok Kim
PI Affiliation
Tulane University
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Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2025-11-15
End date
2026-10-03
Keywords
Finance & Microfinance, Gender
Additional Keywords
soft information; entrepreneurship; gender gap; communication; loan officers; women
JEL code(s)
G2, J16
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial is based on or builds upon one or more prior RCTs.
Abstract
This study explores how gender affects communication between borrowers and lenders. In partnership with a bank in Afghanistan, we invited micro-entrepreneurs to apply for small loans. The application collects standard financial information, and it also gives borrowers the opportunity to write a message to the loan officer explaining, in their own words, why their ability and willingness to repay can be trusted. Each applicant can provide one explanation addressed to a male loan officer and one addressed to a female loan officer. Providing financial information is mandatory, but writing a message is optional. By analyzing the narratives written by the same applicant, we assess whether individuals—and particularly female applicants—communicate differently when the message is directed to an opposite-gender loan officer. Next, we recruit loan officers to evaluate the applications and test whether the marginal value of borrower narratives is lower when they communicate with opposite gender. These findings will allow us to evaluate whether gender-based communication barriers contribute to disparities in access to finance and whether increasing the number of female loan officers could help reduce these gaps.

AMENDMENT OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2026 — NEW VALIDATION STUDY AND LOAN-OFFICER EXPERIMENT

This amendment prospectively adds a narrative-validation study and a new loan-officer experiment to AEARCTR-0017067. These studies build on the earlier experiments and use applications and narratives from the original first-round borrower sample, not the later information-treatment round.

The neutralized narrative corpus was produced and frozen on August 18, 2026, using a locally run large language model to identify explicit recipient-gender expressions for automated removal. No manual narrative edits or subsequent narrative changes were made. At submission of this amendment, no participant in either new study has been recruited, consented, exposed to study materials, or provided an outcome response. No new officer treatment assignments have been generated. Survey batches have been prepared before participant recruitment.

The validation survey is planned for September 12, 2026. Native Dari speakers who can read Dari will guess the gender of the original intended addressee from displayed narratives. The new officer experiment is planned to start on September 19, 2026, with evaluations completed by October 3, 2026. Approximately 100 new loan officers will each evaluate 150 applications. Officers will be randomized between a regime using generic narrative headings and a regime whose headings truthfully disclose the gender of the narrative's original intended addressee. All displayed officer-study narratives will use the frozen neutralized texts. The primary officer outcome is the assessed probability of repayment, reported from 0 to 100 in increments of ten.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Kim, Yongseok and Navid Neshat. 2026. "Communication Frictions and the Gender Gap in Access to Credit." AEA RCT Registry. September 11. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.17067-1.2
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
This study examines how borrowers’ written communication in small-loan applications influences loan officers’ evaluations and actual lending outcomes at a partner bank. Eligible micro-entrepreneurs complete standardized, collateral-free loan applications that include a short narrative describing their ability and willingness to repay. Each applicant can provide one narrative addressed to a male loan officer and one addressed to a female loan officer. All applications are anonymized before review so that loan officers cannot see any borrower identifiers. Loan officers evaluate applications using the bank’s regular scoring procedures, and loan decisions are based on these evaluations. After the evaluation phase, officers complete a short follow-up survey about their review experience. Some details of the study design are temporarily withheld to preserve research integrity and will be made public once data collection and analysis are complete.

AMENDMENT OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2026 — NEW VALIDATION STUDY AND LOAN-OFFICER EXPERIMENT

The extension tests whether loan officers evaluate differently the neutralized narratives originally written by the same borrower for male and female officers, and whether this source contrast changes when a heading explicitly identifies the original intended addressee's gender.

In Neutralized-N, both narrative sources are displayed under "Applicant's Message to Loan Officers." In Neutralized-A, a narrative originally written for male officers is displayed under "Applicant's Message to Male Loan Officers," and a narrative originally written for female officers under "Applicant's Message to Female Loan Officers." These headings follow the narrative's source, not the evaluating officer's gender. The corresponding narrative text is identical across regimes. Both regimes also include applications with no displayed narrative.

Applicant hard information, including applicant gender, is displayed and held fixed across versions of the same application. Each officer sees only one version of each applicant. A separate native-Dari-speaker survey will assess whether the original intended addressee's gender can be inferred from the neutralized passages.
Intervention Start Date
2025-11-15
Intervention End Date
2026-10-03

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Evaluation Score (Likert scale, 1 to 10)

AMENDMENT OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2026 — NEW VALIDATION STUDY AND LOAN-OFFICER EXPERIMENT

New officer experiment: assessed probability of full loan repayment at maturity, reported from 0 to 100 in increments of ten.

Validation survey: correctness of the respondent's guess about the gender of the narrative's original intended addressee.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
The primary outcome is the loan officer’s evaluation score, measured on a scale from 1 to 10, reflecting how likely they believe the applicant is to repay the loan by the maturity date, where 1 indicates “very unlikely to repay.”

AMENDMENT OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2026 — NEW VALIDATION STUDY AND LOAN-OFFICER EXPERIMENT

The officer's repayment-probability assessment is analyzed in levels, with effects expressed in percentage points. Zero and 100 are valid responses; the response field has no default value. The earlier registration's 1–10 Likert-scale description does not apply to this new officer round.

For the validation survey, a response is coded 1 when the selected gender matches the original intended addressee and 0 otherwise. Correctness refers to addressee gender, not borrower gender. The resulting mean is the proportion of correct classifications. Failure to reject a chance benchmark will be described as absence of evidence of a difference, not as proof that recipient gender is completely undetectable.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
AMENDMENT OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2026 — NEW VALIDATION STUDY AND LOAN-OFFICER EXPERIMENT

Evaluation-level Brier loss among the 43 financed benchmark applicants.
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)
AMENDMENT OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2026 — NEW VALIDATION STUDY AND LOAN-OFFICER EXPERIMENT

For officer j and financed applicant i, Brier loss is (p_ij - y_i)^2, where p_ij is the officer's 0–100 assessment divided by 100 and y_i records repayment of the full AFN 10,000 obligation by contractual maturity. Full on-time repayment is coded 1. Under the specified coding convention, late repayment, partial repayment, restructuring, waivers, and missing repayment information are coded 0.

Repayment outcomes are not yet known for all 43 financed benchmark applicants at registration. Brier loss and performance compensation will be calculated when the repayment information is compiled. Missing repayment information is coded 0 by convention; it is not evidence of an observed default. This accuracy outcome pertains to historically financed borrowers rather than all applicants.

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
This study examines how written communication in loan applications affects how applicants are perceived by loan officers. We collaborate with a financial institution to collect anonymized loan applications that include a short open-ended section where borrowers describe their credibility and repayment ability. Professional loan officers evaluate these applications, and the bank’s lending decisions are based on these evaluations. To protect privacy, all applications are anonymized before review, and loan officers cannot see any borrower information that reveals gender or identity. The study aims to better understand how borrower communication influences officers’ assessments. More details of the study are temporarily withheld to preserve the integrity of the research and will be made public once the study concludes.

AMENDMENT OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2026 — NEW VALIDATION STUDY AND LOAN-OFFICER EXPERIMENT

The new officer experiment uses only first-round applications. Of 449 original applicants, 391 supplied at least one substantive narrative. This usable pool comprises 43 financed and 348 non-financed applicants. The 351 applicants with both narrative versions—181 men and 170 women—form the confirmatory sample for comparisons between narrative sources. The other 40 applicants have only one narrative. Three of the 46 originally financed borrowers supplied no usable narrative and are therefore outside the 391-applicant pool.

Approximately 100 new male and female loan officers will each review 150 applications: all 43 financed benchmark applications plus 107 applications randomly sampled without replacement from the 348 non-financed applicants. The non-financed sample is drawn separately for each officer. Officers who participated in the earlier officer experiments or were involved in the original financing decisions are not eligible for this new officer sample.

One available application version is randomly selected for each applicant–officer pair. Officers are independently of these packet draws assigned to one of the two heading regimes, with approximately equal allocation and no stratification. The applicant and version draws are not balanced by gender or other characteristics.

The validation survey is planned for September 12, 2026, with up to 100 participants and 50 passage judgments per participant. Participants will be recruited through research assistants' networks. Eligibility requires native Dari fluency and ability to read Dari; no geographic restriction is imposed. Loan officers, former partner-bank employees, and people involved in the earlier experiments are excluded. The officer round begins September 19, 2026, with completion planned for October 3, 2026.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Randomization is conducted in the office using a computer program.

AMENDMENT OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2026 — NEW VALIDATION STUDY AND LOAN-OFFICER EXPERIMENT

Randomization is performed by computer. For each new officer, draw 107 non-financed applications without replacement, combine them with the 43 common financed applications, and independently draw one eligible version for each applicant. Allocate officers approximately equally between Neutralized-N and Neutralized-A without stratification, independently of the application and version draws. Randomly order each officer's packet. The validation survey uses the Stata program build_gender_neutralization_survey_assignments(5).do, with its five fixed stage-specific seeds and the 46+4 assignment procedure described in the validation subsection of Experimental Design (Hidden).
Randomization Unit
Borrower-level randomization:
The gender of the officer shown to applicants (“male officer” vs. “female officer”) is randomized at the individual borrower application level.

AMENDMENT OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2026 — NEW VALIDATION STUDY AND LOAN-OFFICER EXPERIMENT

Loan-officer level: assignment to the recipient-unspecified or gender-specific-heading regime.

Applicant–officer-pair level: assignment of the displayed application version.

Within-officer packet: random selection of non-financed applications and random presentation order.

Validation survey: participant-specific selection of 46 distinct eligible applicants; target-version assignment balanced 23/23 within participant; positive-control pattern assignment in blocks of four participant IDs; and randomized passage order within participant. No new borrower-level intervention is conducted in this extension.

Officer–application-level randomization:
The narrative visibility condition (“Narrative Visible” vs. “Narrative Concealed”) is randomized independently for each officer–application pair.

Officer-level randomization:
In the post-evaluation survey stage, whether borrower gender is revealed in the officer’s feedback report (“Gender Revealed” vs. “Gender Hidden”) is randomized at the officer level.
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
Approximately 600 borrower applications (individual-level randomization, not clustered) and 50 loan officers (clustered randomization for post-evaluation survey stage).

AMENDMENT OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2026 — NEW VALIDATION STUDY AND LOAN-OFFICER EXPERIMENT

Approximately 100 new loan officers are the assignment clusters for the officer-level heading regimes. The separate validation survey is planned for up to 100 participants. The officer experiment reuses 391 existing applicant records; it does not recruit 391 new borrowers.
Sample size: planned number of observations
150*50=7500 application-officer AMENDMENT OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2026 — NEW VALIDATION STUDY AND LOAN-OFFICER EXPERIMENT Approximately 15,000 application–officer evaluations (approximately 100 officers x 150 applications), comprising approximately 4,300 financed-benchmark evaluations and 10,700 non-financed evaluations. The confirmatory source-comparison sample is the subset involving the 351 applicants who supplied both narratives. The separate validation survey has up to 5,000 passage judgments (up to 100 participants x 50 passages): up to 4,600 neutralized-passage judgments and 400 original-positive-control judgments. These are repeated judgments, not 5,000 separate participants.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
Borrower-level treatment (unit = application; not clustered)

Officer gender shown = Male:
Planned invitations: 300 borrowers (≈ half female, half male overall sample stratified by borrower gender)
Expected completed applications: ≈250

Officer gender shown = Female:
Planned invitations: 300
Expected completed applications: ≈250

Note: Total invitations = 600 (300 female, 300 male). Expected completed applications ≈ 500 in total, with ≈ 250 per arm.

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Officer–application condition (unit = officer–application evaluation; not clustered)

Narrative Visible: approximately 50 percent of officer–application evaluations

Narrative Concealed: approximately 50 percent of officer–application evaluations

Exact counts depend on the final number of evaluations per application. The split is designed to be 1:1 across all officer–application observations.

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Post-evaluation survey treatment (unit = loan officer; clustered at officer level)

Borrower gender revealed in officer report: 25 clusters (officers)

Borrower gender hidden in officer report: 25 clusters (officers)

Total officers = 50, randomly assigned 25/25 across the two survey arms.

AMENDMENT OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2026 — NEW VALIDATION STUDY AND LOAN-OFFICER EXPERIMENT

Officer-level heading regimes: approximately 50 officers in Neutralized-N and 50 in Neutralized-A, corresponding to approximately 7,500 application evaluations per regime if 100 officers each complete 150 evaluations. These are planned approximate counts, not fixed within-gender quotas.

For applicants with paired narratives, no narrative, N(M_i), and N(F_i) each have assignment probability 1/3. For single-narrative applicants, no narrative and the available narrative each have probability 1/2. Realized application-arm totals are not fixed or balanced within officers. The no-narrative display is identical across regimes.

Validation survey: up to 100 participant packets, each containing 46 neutralized passages (23 male-target and 23 female-target) and four original positive controls (two male-target and two female-target). These are within-participant passage assignments, not separate participant treatment arms.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials

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IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Indiana University IRB
IRB Approval Date
2025-05-08
IRB Approval Number
26362
Analysis Plan

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