Finance and Accounting Research Seminar with Distinguished Research Professor Alok Kumar

Title: Gender-Performance Relation in Competitive, But Supportive Work Environments: Evidence From Wall Street

Abstract: This study examines whether gender supportive work environments reduce or eliminate gender-based performance differences in highly competitive Wall Street careers. We find that female analysts issue more accurate forecasts when they operate in women-friendly brokerage environments. The forecasting performance of female analysts exhibits further improvement when the local environment is supportive of women. Exploiting analyst moves across brokerages, we demonstrate that forecasting performance improves when an analyst moves to a more supportive environment. Examining the economic mechanisms underlying these findings, we find that gender supportive environment reduces analyst distraction and improves attentiveness, which results in more timely forecasts, increased forecast thoroughness, lower rate of rounding, and lower forecasting fatigue.