Research
Working papers
Media Focus, Executive Turnover, and Female Leadership (Job Market Paper)
I study whether the tendency of news media to focus on negative events affects executive turnover in publicly listed firms in the U.S., and to what extent negative media focus explains the higher incidence of turnover for women in top executive roles. Linking CEO positions to firm-level news, I provide evidence that the negative focus is higher when a company is led by a woman or an outsider CEO, and that negative news are highly predictive of executive turnover. From the standpoint of a rational board, negative media focus may decrease the expected benefit of retaining a CEO, thus increasing the chances of replacement. Counterfactual simulations from a model of executive turnover with event-dependent media focus show that the higher negative focus explains around 15% of the differential turnover rate in female-led firms, even when women are as effective at managing the firm as their male counterparts.
Presented at: Dissertation Workshop at Boston College, EGSC Conference, AMIE Conference, Warwick Conference, EEA- ESEM Conference, IZA Workshop on “Women in Leadership".
Information diffusion on the importance of early child development has been growing fast starting from the mid-1990s. At the same time, childcare hours have increased, especially for mothers of very young children and the high-educated. I argue that information diffusion on the importance of early investments coupled with increasing income inequality plays an important role towards rationalizing some of the trends in childcare time and the widening of the education gradient in childcare hours at different ages of the child’s lifecycle.
Published papers
Do Board Gender Quotas Matter? Selection, Performance and Stock Market Effects (Management Science, 2021)
with Giulia Ferrari, Chiara Pronzato, and Paola Profeta
From business to politics and academia, the economic effects of gender quotas are under scrutiny. We provide new causal evidence based on the introduction of mandatory gender quotas for boards of directors of Italian listed companies. Exploiting staggered board elections, we find that quotas are associated with a new selection of board members – characterized by higher education and lower age – and no significant costs, neither on firm performance nor on the stock market.
Media Coverage: The Economist, Il Sole 24 Ore (in Italian), Herald Scotland, Oxford Business Law blog, LSE Business Review, N-IUSSP, Corriere della Sera July 2016 and September 2016 (in Italian), La Voce March 2015 and October 2016 (in Italian), La 27esima Ora (in Italian), El Pais (in Spanish), In genere (in Italian)
Policy Impact: Bilancio di Genere (in Italian), Ministry of Economy and Finance
Policy papers
with Angelica Salvi Del Pero, Willem Adema, and Valerie Frey
Work in progress
High Achieving Children (and Mothers): The Role of Parental Peer Pressure