Winning Opportunity
What’s Race Got to Do with It? The Interactive Effect of Race and Gender on Negotiation Offers and Outcomes
Angelica Leigh & Sreedhari Desai
Organization Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Research suggests that women negotiators tend to obtain worse outcomes than men; however, we argue this finding does not apply to all women. Integrating research on social hierarchies, gender in negotiations, and intersectional stereotype content, we develop a theoretical framework that explains the interactive effect of race and gender on offers and outcomes received in distributive negotiations. With a focus on Black and White women and men negotiators, we predicted that stereotypes related to their race and gender lead Black women negotiators to receive more favorable negotiation offers and outcomes than White women and Black men negotiators and this effect is explained by ascriptions of dominance and prestige, respectively. Results of three experimental studies involving diverse samples -- online panel participants, individuals selling items on Craigslist, and MBA students -- support these predictions. More specifically, we find that Black women negotiators are perceived as more dominant than White women negotiators, and Black women negotiators are ascribed greater prestige than Black men negotiators. These ascriptions allow Black women negotiators to receive more favorable negotiation offers and outcomes compared with White women and Black men. These findings highlight the importance of jointly considering the influence of race and gender in negotiations.
Gender Gaps at the Academies
David Card et al.
NBER Working Paper, September 2022
Abstract:
Historically, a large majority of the newly elected members of the National Academy of Science (NAS) and the American Academy of Arts and Science (AAAS) were men. Within the past two decades, however, that situation has changed, and in the last 3 years women made up about 40 percent of the new members in both academies. We build lists of active scholars from publications in the top journals in three fields – Psychology, Mathematics and Economics – and develop a series of models to compare changes in the probability of selection of women as members of the NAS and AAAS from the 1960s to today, controlling for publications and citations. In the early years of our sample, women were less likely to be selected as members than men with similar records. By the 1990s, the selection process at both academies was approximately gender-neutral, conditional on publications and citations. In the past 20 years, however, a positive preference for female members has emerged and strengthened in all three fields. Currently, women are 3-15 times more likely to be selected as members of the AAAS and NAS than men with similar publication and citation records.
How do investors really react to the appointment of Black CEOs?
Seung-Hwan Jeong et al.
Strategic Management Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
A recent study found that markets react negatively to the appointment of Black CEOs, with an average cumulative abnormal return of −4.2%. The authors argue this is caused by investors invoking racial biases and stereotypes. In contrast, using a comparable sampling period and analytic approach, we find markets react positively to the appointment of Black CEOs with an average abnormal return of +3.1% (or +2.0% after conservatively addressing outliers). Our results are consistent across several alternative analyses, sample adjustments, and robustness tests. We argue racial biases and stereotypes in markets are outweighed by investor appreciation for the higher bar for advancement that Black CEOs face and the exceptional attributes they must exhibit as a result. To conclude, we discuss the implications of our findings.
Racial Diversity in Private Capital Fundraising
Johan Cassel, Josh Lerner & Emmanuel Yimfor
NBER Working Paper, September 2022
Abstract:
Black- and Hispanic-owned funds control a very modest share of assets in the private capital industry. We find that the sensitivity of follow-on fundraising to fund performance is greater for minority-owned groups, particularly for underperforming groups. We find little support for a number of explanations for these patterns: that minority fund valuations are overstated, that minority funds encounter difficulties in hiring personnel, or that deploying capital is more difficult for these funds. We do find that the ability of minority groups to raise capital increases during periods of high racial awareness and when the chief investment officer of local public pension plans and endowments are minorities. Together, the results support the hypothesis that the modest representation of Black and Hispanic-owned firms in private capital stems at least partially from the nature of investor demand, rather than the supply of fund managers.
Customer Orientation and Financial Performance: Women in Top Management Teams Matter!
Chandra Srivastava, Saim Kashmiri & Vijay Mahajan
Journal of Marketing, forthcoming
Abstract:
Using a longitudinal analysis of publicly traded Fortune 500 firms, the authors find support for their hypotheses that a relative increase in female influence in the top management team (FITMT) is positively associated with 1) customer orientation of the firm, and 2) long-term financial performance (i.e., Tobin’s q). They demonstrate that customer orientation partially mediates the relationship between FITMT and long-term financial performance. The authors also explore environmental and corporate governance factors that moderate the link between FITMT and customer orientation. They find that this link is attenuated for firms that operate under high environmental dynamism and low environmental discretion, and for firms with high family ownership. Having high female representation among board members and more marketing-experienced board members strengthens the link between FITMT and customer orientation. These findings have important implications for scholars, boards, CEOs, and investors interested in identifying environmental and corporate governance factors that facilitate a greater focus on customers at the highest levels of the firm.
Gendered Consequences of COVID-19 Among Professional Tennis Players
Michael Cary & Heather Stephens
Journal of Sports Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic increased the risk of travelling, working, and participating in public events. To test whether there were gendered differences in the response to COVID-19, we examine the behavior of male and female professional tennis players. We use data from major tennis tournaments which included a rather large number of athletes withdrawing from play. After controlling for past performance, wealth, and other relevant player attributes, we find that female tennis players were more likely to withdraw. This suggests that high-earning women may have greater risk aversion, especially related to COVID-19, than their male counterparts. Importantly, women were more risk-averse when it comes to international travel.
Learning to Discriminate on the Job
Alan Benson & Louis Pierre Lepage
University of Minnesota Working Paper, September 2022
Abstract:
Using administrative records from a large national US retailer, we find managers learn to discriminate "on the job" as they gain experience hiring workers of different races. First, we find that negative and positive experiences with black hires seed the race of future hires, consistent with managers updating their beliefs about the productivity of worker groups. Second, experiences with black workers have a larger impact on future hiring than those with white workers, consistent with greater updating about their productivity. Third, negative experiences have more persistent impacts on future hiring, consistent with negatively-biased beliefs being slower to self-correct than positively-biased ones, because hiring begets learning. These dynamics, combined with the minority status of black workers, yield larger, particularly persistent declines in black hiring following managers' negative hiring experiences. Our results suggest that managers develop biased beliefs from endogenous learning about racial groups, which systematically disadvantages minority workers.
Gender and Racial Diversity: Evidence from Earnings Conference Calls
Gregory Miller, Patricia Naranjo & Gwen Yu
University of Michigan Working Paper, August 2022
Abstract:
We examine the gender and racial diversity of executives participating in earnings calls, and how it evolves over time. Using transcripts of 44,956 earning conference calls of U.S. public firms from 2002 to 2014, we find that female and racial minority executives are much less likely to speak during these calls, conditional on attending. While the number of female and racial minority executives attending conference calls has gradually increased, the number of times women or racial minority executives speak during calls shows no improvement. The differences are more pronounced for C-suite level executives and executives that have worked longer at the firm. These findings are consistent with corporations making efforts to increase diversity in the executive teams that attend earnings calls, but they suggest that greater diversity in attendance does not necessarily lead to more diverse views being voiced, especially at the highest ranks. The capital market responds positively to increased diversity, but only when the females or racial minorities in attendance speak up more frequently. An increase in the mere number of female and minority executives attending a call does not lead to stronger capital market responses.
Gender-diverse teams produce more novel and higher-impact scientific ideas
Yang Yang et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 6 September 2022
Abstract:
Science’s changing demographics raise new questions about research team diversity and research outcomes. We study mixed-gender research teams, examining 6.6 million papers published across the medical sciences since 2000 and establishing several core findings. First, the fraction of publications by mixed-gender teams has grown rapidly, yet mixed-gender teams continue to be underrepresented compared to the expectations of a null model. Second, despite their underrepresentation, the publications of mixed-gender teams are substantially more novel and impactful than the publications of same-gender teams of equivalent size. Third, the greater the gender balance on a team, the better the team scores on these performance measures. Fourth, these patterns generalize across medical subfields. Finally, the novelty and impact advantages seen with mixed-gender teams persist when considering numerous controls and potential related features, including fixed effects for the individual researchers, team structures, and network positioning, suggesting that a team’s gender balance is an underrecognized yet powerful correlate of novel and impactful scientific discoveries.
Economic outcomes for transgender people and other gender minorities in the United States: First estimates from a nationally representative sample
Christopher Carpenter, Maxine Lee & Laura Nettuno
Southern Economic Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
We provide the literature's first estimates of economic outcomes for transgender people and other gender minorities in the United States using nationally representative data from the U.S. Census Bureau's Household Pulse Survey which identifies over 9,400 individuals from 2021 to 2022 who are non-cisgender (i.e., whose current gender does not align with their sex assigned at birth). We find that non-cisgender individuals are significantly less likely to be employed, have higher poverty rates, are more likely to have public health insurance, and report greater food insecurity compared to otherwise similar cisgender individuals. We also find that non-cisgender Black individuals fare significantly worse than non-cisgender white individuals. Our results demonstrate the precarious economic position of gender minority populations in America.
The Rise of Age-Friendly Jobs
Daron Acemoglu, Nicolaj Søndergaard Mühlbach & Andrew Scott
NBER Working Paper, September 2022
Abstract:
In 1990, one in five U.S. workers were aged over 50 years whereas today it is one in three. One possible explanation for this is that occupations have become more accommodating to the preferences of older workers. We explore this by constructing an “age-friendliness” index for occupations. We use Natural Language Processing to measure the degree of overlap between textual descriptions of occupations and characteristics which define age friendliness. Our index provides an approximation to rankings produced by survey participants and has predictive power for the occupational share of older workers. We find that between 1990 and 2020 around three quarters of occupations have seen their age-friendliness increase and employment in above-average age-friendly occupations has risen by 49 million. However, older workers have not benefited disproportionately from this rise, with substantial gains going to younger females and college graduates and with male non-college educated workers losing out the most. These findings point to the need to frame the rise of age-friendly jobs in the context of other labour market trends and imperfections. Purely age-based policies are insufficient given both heterogeneity amongst older workers as well as similarities between groups of older and younger workers. The latter is especially apparent in the overlapping appeal of specific occupational characteristics.
Privileging Passion: How the Cultural Logic of Work Perpetuates Social Inequality in the Craft Beer Industry
Eli Wilson
Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, September 2022
Abstract:
Having or “finding” passion for work has become an increasingly common cultural logic of work today, one that workers use to justify career choices and managers use to make hiring decisions. However, scholars have yet to articulate how workers enact this cultural logic of work in ways that may ultimately contribute to social inequality in modern workplaces. On the basis of 115 in-depth interviews and two years of ethnographic fieldwork in U.S. craft breweries, the author shows how brewery workers express a heightened relationship to their jobs, which the author calls pure passion, in ways that encompass labor, consumption, and lifestyle practices. Yet because these enactments of pure passion are predicated on privileged social attributes with respect to race, class, and gender, this cultural logic of work ends up reinforcing the dominant position of white, middle-class men in this industry while simultaneously marginalizing the experiences of women and people of color.