Margarita Tsoutsoura, Washington University in St. Louis
Abstract: We use the phased-in introduction of electronic voting in Brazil as an exogenous shock of lower-skilled and lower-income voters’ enfranchisement. Using detailed employee-employer administrative data and a difference-in-differences design that exploits a distinct assignment rule in the implementation of electronic voting based on a population threshold, we document that an increase in enfranchisement in- creases labor earnings of disadvantaged groups. Lower-skilled and lower-income employees experience the greatest benefits. Exploring potential mechanisms, we find that enfranchisement improves outcomes through increases in public sector employment and wages. Moreover, we find spillover effects to the private sector, potentially driven by the expansion of public services, along with an increase in the probability of becoming entrepreneurs for lower-skilled individuals.
Discussant: Will Gornall, University of British Columbia
Abstract: We test whether differences in ownership structure influence race and gender diversity in corporate boards. We find that privately-owned, venture-backed companies appoint a lower proportion of minorities and women to their boards compared to publicly traded firms. After the George Floyd Social Justice Movements of 2020, the racial diversity gap in appointments widened significantly from 7 to 30 percentage points, as private firms responded less to social and media pressure to diversify. The lack of diversity in venture-capital (VC) backed private firms is persistent and remains following firms' IPO, leading to a diversity gap between VC- and non-VC-backed public firms. We show real effects of board diversity, as companies with Black directors are more likely to hire Black employees, an effect absent for Hispanic and female directors. Our study, which uses image recognition techniques combined with extensive manual review to build the first large database of board diversity in VC-backed private firms, highlights the influence of both venture capitalists and public shareholders on board composition and its implications on employee composition.
Abstract: This study examines whether financial market participants are able to assess the economic value of non-executive diversity. I construct a new measure of diversity among non-executive employees utilizing a large and unique resume-level dataset. Using this diversity measure, I find that non-executive diversity has a strong relation with longer-term corporate innovation and employee satisfaction, but it is unrelated to short-run financial performance. The market does not fully recognize the value of minority employees, potentially because it focuses more on tangible, short-term performance and pays relatively less attention on intangible, long-term human capital productivity. During the 1990 to 2021 period, a trading strategy that exploits this market misvaluation yields an annualized risk-adjusted return of over 7%.
Abstract: We examine whether and how racial and gender biases influence crowdfunding success using a natural field experiment on GoFundMe and a complementary survey experiment on Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). The field experiment allows us to directly estimate the causal effects of race and gender on financing outcomes. Results from a neutral benchmark treatment show evidence consistent with favoritism towards white and men as opposed to animosity against minorities and women. We further show that racial and gender disparities in the perceived trustworthiness of the fundraiser drive the observed differences in funding outcomes through influencing the perceived credibility of the campaign. Finally, we provide evidence that signals on the fundraiser’s professional qualification and the campaign’s progress attenuate the observed racial and gender disparities; as such quality signals serve to enhance trustworthiness of the fundraiser and the perceived credibility of the campaign.
