2. Women in the boardroom and their impact on default risk
Pitch research presentation by
Searat Ali
RBUS6914 (Research Process in Business)
University of Queensland
Linking top with bottomline

3. (B) Basic Research Question
Does the boardroom gender diversity reduce default risk?

4. (C) Key paper(s) Recent
Guru
Rank X
Sila, V., Gonzalez, A., Hagendorff, J. (2016). Women on board: Does boardroom gender diversity affect firm risk?. Journal of Corporate Finance. 36, (A* journal).
Chen, S., Ni, X., Tong, J. Y. (2015). Gender Diversity in the Boardroom and Risk Management: A Case of R&D Investment. Journal of Business Ethics (A journal).
Adams, R. B., Ferreira, D. (2009). Women in the boardroom and their impact on governance and performance. Journal of Financial Economics. 94, (A* journal)

5. (D) Motivation/ Puzzle
Consequences of default?
Why default?
Solution to it?
Gender diversity reforms around the globe
Australia
Default risk
Gap in literature
Gender Reforms X
Lehman brother vs Lehman sisters
No study
Mixed findings
Why: Endogeneity
Adams et al 2009

6. H3: Substitution effect
(E) Idea
H1:
Impact
H3: Substitution effect
H2: Channel
Boardroom gender diversity is likely to have a significant impact on default risk due to the monitoring ability of the women. Specifically, women on board may improve the effectiveness of the board in monitoring the opportunistic behaviour of management and mitigating the information asymmetry between management and shareholders, and are thus likely to reduce the default risk (Agency theory).
H1: Women on board reduce default risk
H2: Women on board reduce default risk through the channel of information asymmetry
Women on board are considered substitute monitoring mechanism to weak corporate governance in the literature, however, the proxy of corporate governance (e.g., G-index) used in the literature is external but not internal. The idea is to examine if the gender diversity is the substitute to internal monitoring mechanisms (e.g., independence of board and audit committee) or external monitoring mechanisms (e.g., ownership structure and product market competition).
H3: Women on board is substitute to external governance but not to internal governance.

7. Australian non-financial firms
(F) Data Sampling
Context
Australian non-financial firms
Sample size
800 firms, 6400 observations
Sample period
2008 to 2015

8. (F) Data Proxies for default risk
Merton distance to default
Credit default event
Credit default spread

9. (F) Data Proxies for boardroom gender diversity
% of women on board
Blau index
Women dummy

10. (F) Data Proxies for information asymmetry/stock liquidity (Channel hypothesis)
TWQS
Trading cost LM
Immediacy
Amihud
Price impact

11. Product market competition Ownership concentration
(F) Data Proxies for internal and external governance mechanisms (Substitution hypothesis)
Internal
Board independence
External
Product market competition
Ownership concentration

12. (F) Data Sources
SIRCA
Bloomberg
Morningstar

13. (F) Data Other issues
Data handling
Generalizability
Variation

14. Split sample/ interaction terms
(H) Tools
Baseline regressions
Split sample/ interaction terms
Endogeneity bias
Lagged FE
2SLS
GMM
PMS
DID
Pooled OLS
Fixed effect
Between effect
Fixed effect
Partial vs full mediation

15. (H) Tools Additional analysis Software Research assistant GFC
Balanced data
Top 200 ASX firms
Additional analysis
Research assistant
Software
STATA

16. Boardroom gender diversity
(H) What's New?
Boardroom gender diversity
Channel +
Substitution effects
Default risk X

17. Market microstructure
(H) What's New?
Gender, internal and external governance
Corporate finance
Market microstructure
Asset pricing
Default risk X
Information asymmetry/ stock liquidity

18. Regulators & researchers
(I) So What?
Regulators & researchers
Firms
Investors
Policy making
Portfolio management
Cost of capital

19. (J) Contribution?
Value addition to the literature that investigates the linkage between boardroom gender diversity and risk by providing the first comprehensive and robust evidence on the relationship between women on board and default risk.

20. (K) Other Considerations
Collaboration
Target journal
Risk assessment
Scope
Stokes (2013

21. Collaboration
Idea
Tool
Data

22. Accounting and Finance Journal of Corporate Finance
Target journals
Accounting and Finance
Journal of Corporate Finance
Ranking
Tension
Scope
Topic/country

23. Risk assessment
No result
HIGH
Obsolescence NO
Competition

24. International evidence
Scope/pipeline
Gender diversity
International evidence
Default risk

25. Stokes (2013) Innovation and creativity
Passion of Authors
Training
Passion of Journals

27. Research Feedback
Q & A