Women as ‘gold dust’: gender diversity in top boards and the performance of Italian banks

Silvia Del Prete () and Maria Lucia Stefani ()
Additional contact information
Silvia Del Prete: Bank of Italy
Maria Lucia Stefani: Bank of Italy

No 1014, Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) from Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area

Abstract: European comparisons for the 2000s show that Italy was among the EU countries where women were least represented in bank boardrooms. Using a unique dataset on Italian banks over the period 1995-2010, this paper investigates the effects of gender diversity in boards on bank riskiness and economic performance. Taking account of omitted variables and reverse causality problems, as a source of endogeneity, our main econometric findings suggest that gender diversity may have a positive impact on the quality of credit and, to a lesser extent, on profitability. Both results may be driven by women’s higher risk aversion and their attitude to monitoring activities. Our study therefore suggests that women are ‘gold dust’ for Italian banks and that increasing their presence may be beneficial to economic performance.

Keywords: banking; corporate governance; gender diversity; board of directors (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G21 G34 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-eff, nep-eur and nep-hrm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.bancaditalia.it/pubblicazioni/temi-disc ... 014/en_tema_1014.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bdi:wptemi:td_1014_15

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) from Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().