This paper uses worldwide firm-level data to scrutinize the governance factors that favor gender diversity in leadership positions. Our results reveal that the gender of the dominant shareholder is key. The chief executive of firms with a female dominant shareholder has a significantly higher...

This paper compares the performance of various diversification strategies regarding foreign exchange reserves. The aim is to provide central banks with guidelines in portfolio allocation. We pay particular attention to the situation of upward pressures on U.S. interest rates by implementing our...

Equipoise is defined by Freedman (1987, p.141) as a "state of genuine uncertainty on the part of the clinical investigator regarding the comparative therapeutic merits of each arm in a trial." This principle is grounded in the ethical motivation that any ex-ante preference for a given option...

This paper compares the loans granted to male and female entrepreneurs by a French microfinance institution (MFI). The sample period is split in two: before and after the MFI implemented France's regulatory EUR 10,000 loan ceiling. In the first period, the MFI does not co-finance projects with...

Exploiting cross-sectional and time-series variations in European regulations during the July 2008 – June 2009 period, we show that: 1) Prohibition on covered short selling raises bid-ask spread and reduces trading volume, 2) Prohibition on naked short selling raises both volatility and...

This paper studies the relationship between a microfinance institution (MFI) and its loan officers when officers discriminate against a particular group of micro-entrepreneurs. Using survey data from Uganda, we provide evidence that loan officers are more biased than other employees against...

Recent evidence shows that the poor desperately need access to savings products. But despite this general consensus, microfinance institutions (MFIs) offering savings products are still under-studied. Using random-effect probit estimation on a dataset of 722 MFIs active over the 2005-2010...

How do social banks signal their social commitment to motivated funders? This paper hypothesizes that two main channels are used, namely selectivity and transparency. We test these predictions using a rich dataset comprising balance-sheet information on 5,000 European banks over the 1998-2013...

This paper is the first to draw a global picture of worldwide microfinance equity by taking full advantage of daily quoted prices. We revisit previous findings showing that investors should consider microfinance as a self-standing sector. Our results are threefold. First, microfinance has become...

Effective altruists wish to do good while optimizing the social performance they deliver. We apply this principle to the labor market. We determine the optimal occupational choice of a socially motivated worker who has two mutually exclusive options: a job with a for-profit firm and a lower-paid...