Conference Agenda

Session
FI 15: Gender Discrimination
Time:
Saturday, 19/Aug/2023:
11:30am - 1:00pm

Session Chair: Laurent Bach, ESSEC Business School
Location: 2A-33 (floor 2)


Presentations
ID: 620

Gender, performance, and promotion in the labor market for commercial bankers

Marco Ceccarelli1, Chistoph Herpfer2, Steven Ongena3,4,5,6,7

1VU Amsterdam; 2Emory University, Goizueta Business School; 3University of Zurich; 4Swiss Finance Institute; 5KU Leuven; 6NTNU; 7CEPR

Discussant: Maria-Teresa Marchica (Alliance Manchester Business School)

Using detailed data from the U.S. syndicated loan market, we find that women are persistently under-represented among senior commercial bankers. This gap is not closing over time due to unequal promotion rates between men and women working at the same institution in the same year and cannot be explained by a different individual or managerial performance. The gap is driven more by people than by institutions, with senior bankers both exhibiting assortative matching when switching employers and subsequently shifting the promotion gap in the direction of their previous workplace. We find evidence consistent with parts of the gap being driven by women shouldering more of the burden of family care. Hard credentials or female leadership at the top of banks do not attenuate the gender gap. In contrast, after being targeted by gender discrimination lawsuits, banks increasingly promote women.

EFA2023_620_FI 15_1_Gender, performance, and promotion in the labor market.pdf


ID: 1178

Crime and Punishment on Wall Street: Gender Stigmata in SEC Enforcements

Terrence Hendershott1, Dmitry Livdan1, Norman Schuerhoff2

1UC Berkeley; 2SFI at University of Lausanne, Switzerland

Discussant: Leah Zimmerer (University of Mannheim)

The SEC punishes major financial crimes with both monetary fines and professional bars. We document that punishments differ starkly across gender. Female offenders receive longer bars from the finance industry and smaller money penalties than male offenders on average. While men tend to receive combinations of punishment, women receive either professional bars or monetary penalties, but not both. Females are 50% less likely than males to cooperate with the SEC. This evidence is consistent with a model of enforcement where for women admitting guilt through accepting a professional bar entails social stigma. The SEC’s two-dimensional punishment scheme thus entails economic disparities between men and women.

EFA2023_1178_FI 15_2_Crime and Punishment on Wall Street.pdf


ID: 1066

Fintech and Gender Discrimination

Yongqiang Chu1, Chunxing Sun2, Bohui Zhang3, Daxuan Zhao2

1UNC Charlotte, United States of America; 2Renmin University; 3CUHK Shenzhen

Discussant: Marieke Bos (Stockholm School of Economics, VU Amsterdam)

Using data from a lending platform that switched from a human-based to a machine learning-based system, we find that fintech may increase gender discrimination. The rationale is that machine learning algorithms allow the platform to better decipher differences in borrower preferences between female and male borrowers. Specifically, after the switch, the platform assigned higher interest rates and better credit ratings to less price-sensitive female borrowers. These results are not driven by changes in borrower credit risk or lender preferences. Instead, the behavior is consistent with the platform’s attempt to maximize its revenue by applying price discrimination to female borrowers.

EFA2023_1066_FI 15_3_Fintech and Gender Discrimination.pdf