Board Gender Diversity and Corporate Cash Holdings

Aitzaz Ahsan Alias Sarang, Nicolas Aubert () and Xavier Hollandts ()
Additional contact information
Aitzaz Ahsan Alias Sarang: CERGAM - Centre d'Études et de Recherche en Gestion d'Aix-Marseille - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - UTLN - Université de Toulon, Iqra University
Xavier Hollandts: CRCGM et IFGE - Kedge Business School - Kedge BS - Kedge Business School

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: This study investigates the relationship between boardroom gender diversity and corporate cash holdings (i.e., liquidity risk) and excess cash holdings (i.e., agency risk). Using a sample of French firms listed on the SBF 120 index over the period 1998 to 2015, we find a significant positive relation of board gender diversity for two measures of corporate cash holdings (i.e., corporate cash ratio and industry adjusted cash ratio) and a negative relation with excess cash holdings. These results support that feminized boards are associated with lower liquidity and agency risk implying that women directors engage in stricter monitoring and disallow stockpiling beyond the optimal cash level. The study provides significant intermediate results in relation to the Copé-Zimmermann gender quota law that are robust to alternate specifications and tests.

Keywords: Female Directors; Risk Propensity; Cash Holdings; Gender Quota (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-02897433v1
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in Finance, 2021, 42, pp.7-49. ⟨10.3917/fina.421.0007⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-02897433v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Board Gender Diversity and Corporate Cash Holdings (2021)
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:hal:journl:hal-02897433

DOI: 10.3917/fina.421.0007

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().