Do Women Managers Keep Firms out of Trouble? Evidence from Corporate Litigation and Policies

Authors

Binay K. Adhikari, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
Anup Agrawal
James Malm

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2-2019

Abstract

We find that firms where women have more power in the top management team, measured by female executives’ plurality and pay slice, face fewer operations-related lawsuits. This effect is robust to several treatments of endogeneity and does not appear to be driven by female executives' greater willingness to settle the cases. Evidence from a simultaneous equations approach suggests that firms where women executives have more power avoid lawsuits partly by avoiding some risky but value-increasing firm policies, such as more aggressive R&D, intensive advertising, and policies inimical to other parties.

Comments

© 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Original published version available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jacceco.2018.09.004

Recommended Citation

Adhikari, Binay K., Anup Agrawal, and James Malm. “Do Women Managers Keep Firms out of Trouble? Evidence from Corporate Litigation and Policies.” Journal of Accounting and Economics 67, no. 1 (February 1, 2019): 202–25. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jacceco.2018.09.004.

First Page

202

Last Page

225

Publication Title

Journal of Accounting and Economics

DOI

10.1016/j.jacceco.2018.09.004