Prague Economic Papers 2019, 28(3):363-377 | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.695

Female Leadership and Firm Performance

Arlette Beltran
Arlette Beltran, Academic Department of Economics,Universidad del Pacífico, Lima, Peru

This study explores whether companies´ experience benefits when the firm's CEO and owner are both women. It employs data from the 2009-2014 World Bank Enterprise Surveys (WBES) to measure firms' performance through growth in sales and productivity. Potential endogeneity was corrected by using the UN Gender Development Index and the average fertility rate as they comply with the exclusion restrictions. The paper uses the Control Function method with a Probit first stage estimation and an OLS main equation. The findings suggest that a female owner strengthens the female CEO's business skills and leads to better firm performance than when the CEO is a woman and the owner is a man.

Keywords: firm performance, gender, statistical discrimination, cross-country data
JEL classification: J16, L25, M51, O10

Accepted: April 23, 2018; Published: July 10, 2019  Show citation

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Beltran, A. (2019). Female Leadership and Firm Performance. Prague Economic Papers, 28(3), 363-377. doi: 10.18267/j.pep.695
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