Where Women Make The Difference. The Effects of Corporate Board Gender Quotas on Firms’ Performance across Europe

Simona Comi, Mara, Grasseni, Federica Origo () and Laura Pagani

No 367, Working Papers from University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Economics

Abstract: 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 matching. We find that gender quotas had either a negative or an insignificant effect on firm performance in the countries considered with the exception of Italy, where we find a positive impact on productivity. We then focus on Italy and offer possible explanations for the positive effect of gender quotas using detailed information on board members’ characteristics.

Keywords: Gender quotas; corporate governance; firm performance; productivity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G30 G38 J3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 52
Date: 2017-07-12, Revised 2017-07-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cfn, nep-cse, nep-dem, nep-eff, nep-eur, nep-gen, nep-hrm and nep-lma
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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