Mechanisms Linking Corporate Finance Valuation Access to Household Welfare in Kenya: Multilevel Causal Mediation Analysis

Rather than treating valuation access as a monolithic treatment, the analysis distinguishes between access as financial inclusion, access as information symmetry, and access as governance participation, arguing that each pathway implies a distinct mediator operating at household, firm, and institutional levels. The article synthesises scholarship on valuation practices, corporate finance constraints, and welfare economics to propose a structural model in which firm-level valuation credibility mediates the relationship between household access to finance and welfare through employment stability, entrepreneurial income, and consumption smoothing. Methodological attention centres on the identification challenges posed by cross-level confounding, mediator-outcome feedback, and interference between households linked to the same firm. The proposed design combines inverse probability weighting with causal mediation analysis within a multilevel structural equation framework, and the article specifies testable propositions concerning heterogeneous effects across rural and urban households, formal and informal firms, and credit-constrained and unconstrained borrowers. The contribution is a theoretically grounded, empirically feasible protocol for estimating mechanisms rather than average effects, with implications for valuation reform and inclusive finance policy in Kenya.