This paper studies economic effects of the gender composition of corporate boards, employing a new and unique longitudinal dataset of virtually all Russian companies whose shares were traded on the national stock market between 1998 and 2014. Using multiple identification approaches, alternative...

Despite a conventional wisdom that female board members positively impact firm performance, a thorough examination of the research to date reveals no consensus that female board members have either a positive or negative effect on firm performance. We build the largest dataset of Australian...

We study the effect of corporate board gender quotas on firm performance in Belgium, France, Italy and Spain. The empirical analysis is based on accounting panel data from Bureau Van Dijk's Amadeus. Our identification strategy relies on both double and triple difference estimators with ex-ante...

Board room quotas have recently received an increasing amount of attention. This paper provides novel evidence on firm performance from an exogenous change in female board participation in Sweden. We use the credible threat, aimed at listed firms, of a quota law enacted by the Swedish deputy...

We investigate the relation between board gender diversity and firm profitability using the control function (CF) approach recently suggested by Wooldridge (2015). The CF method takes account of the problem of endogenous explanatory variables that have potential to bias the results. Using a...

A number of studies have found little economic impact of board gender diversity on firm performance. We return to this issue in the context of large European firms. Our contribution is twofold. First, using information on the gender of CEOs children as a source of exogenous variation in female...

This study examines the implications of CEO power on the board structure of banks in the Ghanaian banking industry. Using a unique hand-collected dataset in respect of 21 commercial banks in Ghana for the 2009 – 2017 periods, the results show that CEO power underscores the absence or lack of...

This paper identifies a positive causal effect of board gender diversity on firm performance by utilizing unique historical events in China. Specifically, the Famine resulted in an evident gender gap in the supply of qualified directors of certain cohorts. Since the shocks differ in both gender...

This study aims to obtain empirical evidence of the effect of Board Size, Woman on Boards on Financial Distress, as well as the Role of Political Connections in Moderating Board Size, Woman on Boards on Financial Distress. This study seeks to identify the effect of Board Size, Woman on Boards on...

Arguments for increasing gender diversity on boards of directors range from ensuring equal opportunity to improving firm performance, but the empirical results are mixed and often negative. Current research does not justify gender quotas on grounds of economic efficiency. Furthermore, in most...