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Thesis advisor: Claudia Olivetti / Thesis advisor: Arthur Lewbel / The goal of this dissertation is to understand the absence of women from executive and high-earning positions, with a special focus on the corporate environment. In the first chapter, I analyze the role of news media towards explaining why women in top executive roles in the United States face more unstable appointments relative to their male counterparts. To improve female representation at the top of the firm, several European countries mandated gender quotas on corporate boards. In the second chapter, I analyze a board gender quota mandated on Italian listed companies and its effects on the composition of the board and firm performance. Family responsibilities are among the most important factors that prevent women from reaching high-earning positions. In the third chapter, I broaden the scope of my investigation to high-skill women in the United States, and provide explanations for the very large increase in childcare hours spent on young children by high-skill mothers of the recent generations. The first chapter, “Media Focus, Executive Turnover, and Female Leadership”, analyzes how the tendency of news media to focus on negative events affects executive turnover in publicly listed firms in the U.S., and to what extent negative media focus explains the relatively higher incidence of turnover for women in top executive roles. Negative media focus implies that news reporting decisions can produce downward-biased public beliefs on firm performance. From the standpoint of a rational board, pessimistic public beliefs on firm performance may affect the expected benefit of retaining a CEO, and in turn, turnover decisions. Linking CEO positions to firm-level news, I provide evidence that the negative focus is higher when a company is led by a woman or an outsider CEO. Counterfactual simulations from a model of executive turnover with event-dependent media focus show that the higher negative focus explains around 15% of the differential turnover rate in female-led firms, even when women are as effective at managing the firm as their male counterparts. In the second chapter, “Do Board Gender Quotas Matter? Selection, Performance, and Stock Market Effects”, co-authored with Giulia Ferrari, Paola Profeta, and Chiara Pronzato, I analyze the effects of a gender quota mandated on corporate boards of Italian listed companies in 2013. Exploiting staggered board elections, we find that quotas are associated with a new selection of board members – characterized by higher education and lower age – and no significant costs, neither on firm performance nor on the stock market. In the third chapter, “Revisiting the Childcare Gap Between High- and Low-Skill mothers”, I show that information diffusion on the importance of early child development has been growing fast starting from the mid-1990s. At the same time, childcare hours have increased, especially for mothers of very young children and the high-educated. I argue that information diffusion on the importance of early investments coupled with increasing income inequality plays an important role towards rationalizing some of the trends in childcare time and the widening of the education gradient in childcare hours at different ages of the child’s lifecycle. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

本文研究了海外背景的董事在中国上市公司中的表现和作用。本文从董事最基本的两个作用监督和指导出发，研究了海外背景的董事对于董事会治理和公司表现的各项投入和产出。研究结果表明，海外背景的董事在董事会会议的缺席记录更多，更少参与特殊委员会的工作。海外背景的董事对于高管薪酬水平的管理更弱，但在解雇表现不佳的CEO有积极的作用。在指导作用上，海外背景的董事表现得并不尽如人意。海外背景的董事并没有利用自己的海外经历为公司在海外并购业务来带好处。最后，海外背景董事占比最高的公司，托宾Q所代表的公司表现更低。这篇文章的重要性在于，这是第一篇用国内数据研究海外背景董事在公司治理和表现中的作用的文章，同时也是第一篇详细阐述不同的海外背景所具有的不同影响的文章。 / This paper discusses the presence and the roles of directors with foreign backgrounds in China’s listed companies. Starting from the two basic roles of boards, monitoring and directing, this paper examines the inputs and outputs of foreign-background directors (FBDs) on board governance and firm performance. The result shows that FBDs are associated with worse board meeting attendance records, less special committee assignments, weaker control in senior executive compensation level, but more strength in firing underperforming CEOs. In directing-related functions, FBDs does not meet the expectation that they can benefit the firm’s cross-border merger and acquisition decision by taking advantage of their foreign background knowledge. Finally, firms with higher fraction of FBDs on board are associated with poorer performance in terms of Tobin's Q. This research is significant because it is the first exploration of the functions of FBDs in listed corporations using China’s data, and the first attempt to identify the role of each different foreign background. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Xia, Keqin. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2012. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 30-34). / Abstracts also in Chinese. / Foreign Background Directors and Corporate Performance: Empirical Evidence from China’s listed Companies --- p.I / ABSTRACT --- p.II / 摘要： --- p.III / ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS --- p.IV / Chapter SECTION I --- : INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / Chapter SECTION II --- : LITERATURE REVIEW --- p.3 / Chapter 2.1 --- Board Functions--Monitoring and Directing --- p.3 / Chapter 2.1.1 --- Monitoring function & agency problem --- p.3 / Chapter 2.1.2 --- Directing function --- p.6 / Chapter 2.2 --- Board Governance and Firm Performance --- p.6 / Chapter SECTION III --- : DATA AND METHODS --- p.7 / Chapter 3.1 --- Individual characteristics --- p.7 / Chapter 3.2 --- Board characteristics --- p.8 / Chapter 3.3 --- Firm characteristics --- p.10 / Chapter 3.4 --- Different foreign backgrounds --- p.10 / Chapter SECTION IV --- : EMPIRICAL RESULTS --- p.12 / Chapter 4.1 --- Board Meeting Attendance Problem and FBDs --- p.12 / Chapter 4.1.1 --- Regression analysis of absence ratio --- p.14 / Chapter 4.1.2 --- Regression analysis of the total absence ratio --- p.15 / Chapter 4.1.3 --- Conclusion on attendance problem and foreign backgrounds --- p.17 / Chapter 4.2 --- Probit Regression Analysis of Committee Assignments --- p.17 / Chapter 4.3 --- Regression Analysis of Senior Executives’ Compensation --- p.19 / Chapter 4.4 --- Regression Analysis of CEO Turnover Rate --- p.21 / Chapter 4.5 --- An Event Study: Cross-border Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) Analysis --- p.23 / Chapter 4.6 --- Firm Performance Regression Analysis: FBDs and ROA --- p.26 / Chapter 4.7 --- Firm Performance Regression Analysis: Tobin’s Q and FBDs --- p.28 / Chapter SECTION V --- : SUMMARY --- p.29 / REFERENCES --- p.30 / FIGURES AND TABLES --- p.35