Amalia R. Miller

A Female Style in Corporate Leadership? Evidence from Quotas

This paper studies the impact of gender quotas for corporate board seats on corporate decisions. We examine the introduction of Norways 2006 quota, comparing affected firms to other Nordic companies, public and private, that are unaffected by the rule. We find that affected firms undertake fewer workforce reductions than comparison firms, increasing relative labor costs and employment levels and reducing short-term profits. The effects are strongest among firms without female board members beforehand and are present even for boards with older and more experienced members afterward. The boards appear to be affecting corporate strategy in part by selecting like-minded executives.

Motherhood Delay and the Human Capital of the Next Generation

This paper exploits biological fertility shocks as instrumental variables to estimate the causal effect of motherhood delay on the cognitive ability of the next generation. Using detailed panel data on women in the NLSY79 and their first-born children aged 5 to 14, we find that a year of delay leads to significant increases in math and reading scores: a 7 year delay produces gains on par with the black-white score difference. These results reveal a potential weakness of pro-natalist policies that promote early motherhood. While such policies may succeed at increasing total period fertility rates, they will be less effective at increasing total human capital.

Workforce Reductions at Women-Owned Businesses in the United States

The authors find that privately held firms owned by women were less likely than those owned by men to downsize their workforces during the Great Recession. Year-to-year employment reductions were as much as 29% smaller at women-owned firms, even after controlling for industry, size, and profitability. Using data that allow the authors to control for additional detailed firm and owner characteristics, they also find that women-owned firms operated with greater labor intensity after the previous recession and were less likely to hire temporary or leased workers. These patterns extend previous findings associating female business leadership with increased labor hoarding.

The Effects of Welfare Reform on the Academic Performance of Children in Low-Income Households

During the 1990s, U.S. welfare policy underwent dramatic reforms aimed at promoting employment and reducing dependence. Although the immediate effects on adult labor supply and family income have been studied extensively, this paper is the first to evaluate the long-run effects on children’s well-being. Using a decade of national math achievement data and controlling for contemporaneous changes in education policy and environment, we associate welfare reform with relative test score improvements for low-income students. Greater gains occur in states with larger initial welfare caseloads and larger caseload reductions.© 2009 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.

Does Temporary Affirmative Action Produce Persistent Effects? A Study of Black and Female Employment in Law Enforcement

This paper exploits variation in the timing and outcomes of employment discrimination lawsuits against U.S. law enforcement agencies to estimate the cumulative and persistent employment effects of temporary externally imposed affirmative action (AA). We find that AA increased black employment at all ranks by 4.5 to 6.2 percentage points relative to national trends. We also find no erosion of these employment gains in the fifteen years following AA termination, although black employment growth was significantly lower in departments after AA ended than in departments whose plans continued. For women, in contrast, we find only marginal employment gains at lower ranks.

The Impact of Midwifery-Promoting Public Policies on Medical Interventions and Health Outcomes

Abstract This paper measures the impact of midwifery-promoting public policies on maternity care in the United States, using national Vital Statistics data on births spanning 1989-1999. State laws mandating insurance coverage of midwifery services are associated with an 18-percentage rise in midwife-attended births. The laws did not decrease rates of cesarean deliveries or lead to consistent effects on maternal mortality or Apgar scores. They did, however, lead to a statistically significant drop in neonatal deaths. Divergence between OLS and natural experiment estimates suggests that women are selecting into provider groups based on unobserved preferences and health.

Did the airline tariff publishing case reduce collusion

In December 1992, the U.S. Department of Justice filed suit against eight major domestic airlines and the Airline Tariff Publishing (ATP) Company in order to reduce opportunities for collusion in the industry. The lawsuit ended with consent decrees limiting the ability of airlines to communicate surreptitiously through the shared fare database. This paper measures the effects of the litigation and its settlement on industry performance, comparing changes in outcomes between market segments that were more and less likely to be affected by the ATP case. Prices fell in response to the investigation but increased following the settlement, while the number of tickets sold in affected markets declined. The importance of multimarket contact also declined and then recovered. The ATP case had at best a temporary effect on airline collusion.

Intergenerational Effects of Welfare Reform on Educational Attainment

AbstractThis paper estimates the impact of the fundamental welfare reforms of the 1990s on the educational attainment of children in low-income families. Using administrative records and individual survey data spanning the early 1990s to the mid-2000s, we find large positive effects of welfare reform: income gaps in school enrollment and dropout rates narrow by more than 20 percent. Unlike the significant and growing relative gains in the years following state welfare reforms, we find no evidence of relative gains for low-income adolescents in the years preceding the reforms. These findings are robust under alternative definitions of the treatment and control groups and after controlling for contemporaneous economic and policy changes.

Do Female Officers Improve Law Enforcement Quality? Effects on Crime Reporting and Domestic Violence Escalation

We study the impact of the integration of women in US policing between the late 1970s and early 1990s on violent crime reporting and domestic violence escalation. Along these two key dimensions, we find that female officers improved police quality. Using crime victimization data, we find that as female representation increases among officers in an area, violent crimes against women in that area, and especially domestic violence, are reported to the police at significantly higher rates. There are no such effects for violent crimes against men or from increases in the female share among civilian police employees. Furthermore, we find evidence that female officers help prevent the escalation of domestic violence. Increases in female officer representation are followed by significant declines in intimate partner homicide rates and in rates of repeated domestic abuse. These effects are all consistent between fixed effects models with controls for economic and policy variables and models that focus exclusively on increases in female police employment driven by externally imposed affirmative action plans resulting from employment discrimination cases.

Privacy Protection, Personalized Medicine, and Genetic Testing

This paper explores how state genetic privacy laws affect the diffusion of personalized medicine, using data on genetic testing for cancer risks. State genetic privacy regimes employ and combine up to three alternative approaches to protecting patient privacy: Rules requiring that an individual is notified about potential privacy risks; rules restricting discriminatory usage of genetic data by employers or insurance companies; and rules limiting redisclosure without the consent of the individual. We find empirically that approaches to genetic and health privacy that give users control over redisclosure encourage the spread of genetic testing, but that notification deters individuals from obtaining genetic tests. We present some evidence that the latter reflects costs imposed on the supply of genetic testing by hospitals. We find no effects of state genetic antidiscrimination laws on genetic testing rates. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2858. This paper was accepted b...