This paper measures diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) using proprietary data on survey responses used to compile the Best Companies to Work For list. We identify 13 of the 58 questions as being related to DEI, and aggregate the responses to form our DEI measure. This variable has low correlation with gender and ethnic diversity in the boardroom, in senior management, and within the workforce, suggesting that DEI captures additional dimensions missing from traditional measures of demographic diversity. DEI is also unrelated to general workplace policies and practices, suggesting that DEI cannot be improved by generic initiatives. However, DEI is higher in small growth firms and firms with high financial strength. DEI is associated with higher future accounting performance across a range of measures, higher future earnings surprises, and higher valuation ratios, but demographic diversity is not. DEI perceptions among professional workers, such as R&D employees, are significantly correlated with the number and quality of patents. However, DEI exhibits no link with future stock returns.

We study gender differences in the value of credentials in managerial labor markets. We use within-firm variation in S&P 500 status for marginal firms “just included” on the index and managers who joined a marginal firm before its addition to the index to obtain variation in S&P 500 experience. We then difference out any unobservables that affect both women and men within the same firm-year. Men with experience at an S&P 500 firm obtain more subsequent independent directorships and executive roles at other S&P 500 firms, but not at non-S&P 500 firms. The increase is 12-42% relative to the average. Strikingly, we observe no such relationship for women. Our results suggest that one obstacle women face in the managerial labor market is that they receive less credit than men for similar credentials.

Boards of U.S. public firms have shown substantial and ongoing progress in demographic diversity, but no progress in diversity of experience, skill, and viewpoints. The addition of demographically diverse directors contributes positively to experience and skill diversity but has an asymmetric effect on viewpoint diversity. Specifically, the addition of demographically diverse directors is associated with an increase (decrease) in political stance diversity among boards that were dominated by incumbent directors leaning Republican (Democratic), resulting in ``bluer'' boards for both groups. The asymmetric effect on viewpoint diversity cannot be explained by the availability of conservative-leaning candidates.