Top management gender diversity and performance: in search of threshold effects
利用英国企业大样本数据，采用倾向得分匹配法分析任命首位女性董事对企业增长和劳动成本效率的显著影响，并发现女性董事比例约30%时效果最大。
Abstract The impact of gender diversity on business performance has been featured prominently on the agenda of many politicians and business leaders in recent years. However, empirical results of the impact of gender diversity on firm performance have been ambiguous. This paper contributes to the literature by using propensity score-based estimation techniques on a large sample of UK firms to analyse the performance effect of appointing a first female board director. We look at financial and non-financial performance indicators and document significant effects on firm growth and labour cost efficiency, but rather fragile ones on accounting returns, such as profitability. We also document evidence of another threshold effect; namely, gender diversity appears to have its highest impact (its ‘ceiling’) when the proportion of female directors is approximately 30%. Carrying out a sensitivity analysis, we conclude that hidden bias must be implausibly high to be able to attribute the beneficial effects of boardroom gender diversity to unmeasured confounding.