Do Women in Top Management Affect Firm Performance?A Panel Study of 2500 Danish Firms * Corporate governance literature argues that board diversity is potentially positively related to firm performance. This study examines the relationship in the case of women in top executive jobs and on boards of directors. We use data for the 2500 largest Danish firms observed during the period 1993-2001 and find that the proportion of women in top management jobs tends to have positive effects on firm performance, even after controlling for numerous characteristics of the firm and direction of causality. The results show that the positive effects of women in top management depend on the qualifications of female top managers.JEL Classification: G38, J16, M14

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. In this paper, the probability of promotion into VP and CEO positions is estimated based on employer-employee data on all Danish companies observed during the period 1997-2007. After controlling for a large number of family-related variables, including take-up history of maternity and paternity leave and proxies for 'female-friendly' companies, there is still a considerable gap in the promotion probabilities for CEO positions, but not for VP positions. Thus, the results cannot confirm recent theories on 'belief flipping' or disappearance of statistical discrimination against women who succeed getting into career track positions. The results reflect that the hiring decision and the decision to enter a top position as 'number one', i.e. CEO, in the organization is very different from the decision to hire or become VP, i.e. 'number two' or lower. JEL Classification:G34, J16, J24, M51

This paper compares income inequality and income mobility in the Scandinavian countries and the United States during the 1980's. The results demonstrate that inequality is greater in the United States than in the Scandinavian countries and that the ranking of countries with respect to inequality remains unchanged when the accounting period of income is extended from one to 11 years. The pattern of mobility turns out to be remarkably similar despite major differences in labor market and social policies between the Scandinavian countries and the United States.Keywords: Income inequality, income mobility. JEL classification: D31Acknowledgement The authors would like to thank the discussant Stephen P Jenkins for helpful comments. We also thank Stephen E. Rhody and seminar pa rticipants at the University of Michigan and the University of Western Ontario.

2 nd generation immigrants from less developed countries have less education and a lower employment frequency compared to the native Danish youth. We analyse the school-to-work transition of these groups using panel data for the years 1985–1997. The educational gap between 2 nd generation immigrants and the Danish youth is to some extent explained by age structure, while age does not explain the native-immigrant gap concerning the duration of waiting time until first job and the duration of first employment spell. Instead parental capital and neighbourhood effects seem to play a major role. We find large gender differences among 2 nd generation immigrants in the school-to-work transition. Copyright Springer-Verlag 2003J61, J71, School-to-work transition, second generation immigrants, intergenerational transmission,