Premium
Board gender composition and debt financing
Author(s) -
Ahmed Ammad,
Atif Muhammad
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
international journal of finance and economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.505
H-Index - 39
eISSN - 1099-1158
pISSN - 1076-9307
DOI - 10.1002/ijfe.1951
Subject(s) - lottery , context (archaeology) , debt , economics , corporate finance , gender diversity , debt ratio , matching (statistics) , diversity (politics) , finance , business , corporate governance , political science , law , paleontology , statistics , mathematics , biology , microeconomics
Abstract There is a recent upsurge in calls for more women on corporate boards around the world; however, a perception of women being risk‐averse that is created by lottery and gambling studies has affected women's advancement in their career ladder. Our study investigates women's risk averseness when they are on corporate boards in the context of a firm's use of debt financing. Using a unique Australian setting, we find that women on the board have a positive association with the firm's use of debt financing. This suggests that firms with women on the board are not conservative in using debt financing. Our results are robust to the use of alternative measures of gender diversity and to a series of sensitivity checks including propensity score matching, difference‐in‐differences and two‐stage least square techniques.