IdEP Seminar "CEO Gender and Firm-to-Firm Transactions", Hitoshi Shigeoka

Institute of Economics

Date: 22 May 2023 / 12:30 - 13:30

Room 253 (main building), Università della Svizzera italiana, Campus Ovest Lugano

While female CEOs are under-represented, the barriers theyf ace in the business environment are not well-understood. Using unique transaction data of nearly 1 million Japanese firms, which contain the CEO gender, we find that CEOs are more likely to trade with CEOs of the same gender, mostly driven by small- and medium-sized firms. Because most CEOs are male, such same-gender bias reduces the trading opportunities for females relative to male CEOs. Furthermore, our survey of CEOs also revealed the existence of social barriers that impede CEOs of the opposite gender from meeting, calling for policies to promote female-male CEO interactions.

This paper is joint work with Yutaro Izumi and Masayuki Yagasaki (University of Tokyo)

Hitoshi Shigeoka
Professor at Tokyo and Simon Fraser University