Women on boards: do quotas affect firm performance?

Cécile Casteuble (), Laetitia Lepetit () and Thu Tha Tran
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Cécile Casteuble: CREM - Centre de recherche en économie et management - UNICAEN - Université de Caen Normandie - NU - Normandie Université - UR - Université de Rennes - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Laetitia Lepetit: LAPE - Laboratoire d'Analyse et de Prospective Economique - GIO - Gouvernance des Institutions et des Organisations - UNILIM - Université de Limoges
Thu Tha Tran: EconomiX - EconomiX - UPN - Université Paris Nanterre - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

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Abstract: In this paper, we investigate the impact of gender quotas on firm performance using countries worldwide that have introduced a gender quota with sanction as a quasi-natural experiment. Our statistical analysis shows that board members' characteristics significantly change after the implementation of the gender quota. The results of our empirical analysis provide evidence that gender quotas have a neutral impact on firm performance in the short term and in the longer term, independently of changes in directors' age, education, nationality, experience or independence. Our findings provide evidence that policymakers can use mandatory quotas to force firms to achieve gender balance on corporate boards without a negative impact on firm performance. Our results also suggest that policymakers create unrealistic expectations for women to boost firm performance. JEL Classification: G34, G38.

Keywords: Corporate governance; gender quotas; firm performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-11-28
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cfn, nep-eff, nep-gen, nep-hrm and nep-ore
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