Working papers


Presentations (selected): SEA 2022, Conference on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Economics, Finance, and Central Banking 2022, Discrimination and Diversity Workshop 2023,  ECBE 2023, AEA 2024 .

Featured in: Times Higher Education (Nov, 2022), Financial Times (Jan, 2024), Freakonomics Radio (April, 2024, Episode 584).

How did #MeToo alter the cost of collaboration between women and men? I show junior female academics start fewer projects after #MeToo. A decrease in collaborations with new male co-authors at the same institution largely explains the decline in projects. The decrease is more pronounced when sexual harassment policies are less clear, in universities with more (public) incidents of sexual harassment, and when amended Title IX regulations (2020) are less favorable towards the accused. This is consistent with men managing a higher perceived risk of sexual harassment accusations as a potential explanation for the decrease in collaborations. Overall, #MeToo appears to bring unintended consequences that impact the career opportunities of junior women. 

Note: While I have not pre-registered the study, I am providing the access to the original time-stamped (unsuccessful) grant proposal for this study (dated June, 9 2021).


This paper examines how companies respond to negative ESG incidents by appointing directors with experience in charitable organizations. We find that firms are more likely to make such appointments following ESG incidents, especially when these incidents attract substantial media attention or involve social issues. The market reacts positively to charity director appointments, which is more pronounced when director biographies, filed with the SEC, highlight such charity experience. We provide evidence that firms leverage the expertise of charity directors to enhance their ESG performance, rather than appointing them for ESG window dressing. Using the density of charities in a firm's vicinity as an instrumental variable, we show causal evidence that future incidents decline after charity director appointments. Moreover, we document that charity directors are often assigned to committees overseeing ESG issues, and their appointments are associated with a higher likelihood of implementing ESG-linked compensation policies. Overall, our study emphasizes the tangible value that charity-experienced directors bring to companies when they need to address ESG concerns. 


Presentation (selected) at NBER-RFS Conference on Inequality, Discrimination and the Financial System 2021, WFA 2021, EFA 2021, NBER Corporate Finance Meeting Fall 2021, FIRN 2021, AEA 2022, WFA-ECWFC 2022, FIRS 2022, ECBE 2022, AFA 2023.

Featured in: Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance (March, 2021); NBER Digest No.5 (May, 2021); Politico (Feb, 2022)

We study shareholder support for corporate board nominees before and after the 2018 California gender quota. We first show that pre-quota, new female nominees received greater support than new male nominees, consistent with women being held to a higher standard. Post-quota, as the number of women increased, support for new (mandated) female nominees decreased to the same level of support that new male nominees enjoy. We conclude that shareholders approve of the quota-mandated female nominees. Share prices reacted negatively to the quota because some boards turned over highly supported male incumbents rather than the least-supported ones when complying with the quota.


The willingness to make the first move can place one in an advantageous position when negotiating and is often a necessary quality for advancing within organizations. In a sequential bargaining game with a first-mover advantage, we find that women are more reluctant to move first than men. The gender difference is consistent with observed gender gaps such as wage inequality and glass ceilings in the labor market. Our data suggests that descriptive gender norms, such that women believe that more female than male participants choose not to move first, may contribute to the gender difference in the reluctance to being the first mover. Furthermore, we find no gender gap in the decision to move second in a sequential bargaining game with a second-mover advantage. Overall, our findings are consistent with women’s pure role preference against being the first mover driving their actions rather than them being averse to taking the advantageous position. 


Increased visibility at academic conferences has the potential of improving women's standing in science. We study female representation at two top conference meetings in finance - a scientific discipline with a significant underrepresentation of women. The two conferences provide a unique laboratory because they vary the discretionary power of the session chairs. We also analyze how #MeToo, one of the most prominent social movements in recent years, affected the gender composition at these meetings. Overall, we find that the fraction of female researchers at finance conferences increases during #MeToo. When the chair has more discretion over selected papers, we observe an increase in the presented papers' authors that are female. When the chair has less discretion, the increase in female's visibility after #MeToo comes from a higher likelihood of being appointed session chair or discussant. We find that most of these effects are permanent. Our results are in line with decision-makers taking advantage of opportunities arising due to social movements to improve women's positions.   




Publications


We theorize that status awards will have a disciplining effect on evaluators, changing how they evaluate candidates. Specifically, status awards will lead evaluators to place less weight on unreliable indicators of candidate quality, such as gender. We test this theory using data from restaurant evaluations on Yelp, focusing on the relationship between an evaluator's rating and their reporting of being served by a man or a woman in their review text. We leverage Yelp's evaluator status award to analyze whether observed gender bias in the star ratings awarded to restaurants decreases after an evaluator receives this status award. Consistent with our theory, we find that evaluators rate restaurants more similarly after receiving the award, regardless of whether they report being served by a man or a woman. Status awards in our context close the gender gap in restaurant ratings by 56.5 percent (a 0.07 stars improvement out of an initial rating gap of -0.13 stars). This reduction in gender bias is mostly due to a decrease in the number of extremely low (one star) ratings in reviews that reference female servers. Research on status and evaluations has mostly focused on how evaluators react to increases in candidate status. We demonstrate the importance of evaluator status as a mechanism for decreasing observed gender differences in evaluations.


I study how universities changed the specificity of their sexual harassment policies around #MeToo. I observe a trend toward increasing policy specificity after #MeToo, particularly in private universities, those with publicized harassment cases, or in universities led by presidents from male-dominated academic backgrounds. Additionally, I present suggestive evidence of a link between the hiring of junior female faculty and the adoption of more specific policies in environments where the composition of senior faculty is more male dominated after #MeToo. Overall, my results indicate that universities prioritize clearer guidance for behavior through narrower policies over retaining flexibility with broader policies post-#MeToo.



Other work: Art Markets


We apply network theory to study auction outcomes in the market for fine art. Using a unique historical data set, we investigate the drivers of strategic network formation between agents and the effect of network structure on artwork prices. Our results show that the number of prior direct links formed as well as similarities in specializations across dealers who are bidding at an auction and sellers of artwork are both strong predictors for link formation and artwork prices. While a higher number of direct links helps dealers to fetch artworks at lower prices, a relatively higher specialization increases the winning bid. Furthermore, a larger network decreases the likelihood for a dealer to exit the market. This supports the conjecture that bargaining power and reduced information asymmetries are the main influencing forces for network formation as well as the strategic bidding behavior of market players. Lastly, dealers with a lower market exposure are eager to form links but are reluctant to bid aggressively.


Media Coverage (selected):  CNN, ABC News (TV interview), Sydney Morning Herald, The Age.

We study prices paid at auction for artworks created by male and female artists, based on birth-identified sex, and how these prices have evolved over time. Artworks produced by female artists comprise less than 4% of art auction sales; after controlling for artwork characteristics, we find that artworks by female artists are 4.4% more expensive than artworks by male artists. In the top echelon of the art market—for sales above $1 million—artworks by male artists sell for 18.4% more than by female artists. The top 40 artists represent 40% of total market share; no female artist makes the top 40 ranking of artists in terms of total sales value at auction in the period under study, 2000–2017. However, for contemporary artists, our empirical results show that works by male artists sell for 8.3% more than their female counterparts. Overall, this study highlights significant price differences across birth-identified sex in the secondary market for fine art. 

Ungated version “Glass Ceilings in the Art Market”, 2018.