Lorenzo Escot

Disentangling Discrimination on Spanish Boards of Directors

Manuscript Type: Empirical Research Question/Issue: This study seeks to find evidence of discrimination behind the scarce presence of women on Spanish boards of directors through factors within firms linked with different theories of discrimination. Research Findings/Insights: Using data on the boards of directors from the top 1,000 Spanish companies in 2005 and 2008, we identify some signals of discrimination. We find that women directors are scarcer in those sectors where there are fewer female managers or where the directors mainly draw on the firm’s executive staff. There is also evidence of the dynamics of Becker’s theory of discrimination, since time and competition seem to play in favor of a female presence on Spanish boards. We also find a contagion effect, implying a positive relationship between the number of women already on the board and the likelihood of adding a woman. This could signal some kind of underestimation of women’s skills and preconceptions about their attitudes (such as risk-aversion) and hence their capacity to hold these positions. Theoretical/Academic Implications: This study provides empirical support for the prediction of Becker’s theory of discrimination. The study also furnishes evidence in favor of the existence of false preconceptions concerning the skills and risk attitudes of female managers. Practitioner/Policy Implications: In order to reduce discrimination before reaching the board we propose to implement education and mentoring initiatives to improve the training of the female candidates, and to improve the work- and family-life balance. Once they are included in the pool of candidates the implementation of good corporate governance practices related to transparency and objectivity in selection procedures and/or even the establishment of a women’s quota on boards may contribute to dismiss employers’ negative beliefs about the capabilities of female candidates.

A field experiment to study sex and age discrimination in the Madrid labour market

This article presents the findings of a field experiment carried out in Madrid which aims to analyse gender and age discrimination in hiring in the labour market of Madrid. A set of five pairs of fictitious man–woman curricula was sent in response to 1062 job offers in six occupations which were advertised on Internet over an eight-month period. It was quantified subsequently the extent to which the different firms contacted more or less the candidates of different sex, age and marital status. No discrimination is detected against women in terms of access to job interviews; however, discriminatory conduct is seen regarding the phenomenon of occupational gender segregation, in the sense that there is a continuance among employers of stereotyped views on the greater suitability of women for certain tasks. No evidence is found to indicate firms showing relative discrimination against married women with children in the first phase of hiring process. And a clear evidence of discrimination is obtained on the basis of age: firms show a substantial fall in interest over interviewing 38-year-old candidates (compared to those aged 24 or 28). This would imply that the tendency to discriminate against older workers may be high, and, what is more, it may start at a surprisingly young age.

International capital flows and convergence in the neoclassical growth model

To analyze how capital mobility affects economic growth and convergence, this paper will use the analytical solution to the neoclassical growth model with a constant saving rate, beginning with the closed-economy Solow growth model. An introduction to international capital flows will follow. In an open economy, free capital mobility assures an instantaneous convergence in interest rates that, under a perfect competence situation, implies the instantaneous convergence in income levels among homogeneous countries. Taking into account this question and to reconcile these results with empirical evidence, that is, with the gradual convergence observed, the assumption is introduced that in spite of free capital mobility, there are international credit restrictions. In this case, we will show how the rate of convergence depends on the international capital inflows received.

Fiscal policy effects, convergence, and growth

The objective of this paper is to create an economic growth model with public capital that determines when exogenous or endogenous growth appears, showing the optimal public sector dimension, and determines the convergence equation condition. An empirical analysis is also developed for several countries.

Technological catch-up: Gradual diffusion of technology and convergence in the neoclassical growth model

In this paper, I study the effects of the international gradual transmission of technology on the convergence processes among countries. In this way, the international gradual diffusion of technology makes possible a greater potential improvement capacity to the less developed country in its technological level. When this hypothesis is included in the Solow-Swan growth models, the paper shows that the convergence hypothesis will now be maintained only in the growth rates since a gap in income levels will remain in the long run. That conditional convergence will be explained by two factors: the diminishing returns for cumulative factor and the gradual diffusion of technology. I will finish this paper with empirical evidence of these two factors explaining convergence.

Gender differences in young adults’ inclination to sacrifice career opportunities in the future for family reasons: comparative study with university students from Nairobi, Madrid, and Reykjavik

ABSTRACT This article addresses the question of to what extent young people show an inclination to accept some sacrifice in their career progression in the future in order to reach a better work–family balance. Data come from a survey conducted among a sample of 2383 university students who attended three universities: University of Nairobi, University of Iceland, and Complutense University of Madrid. After building a set of indicators about career and family involvement aspirations of respondents, and after conducting a statistical and regression analysis, this research shows that young women (on average) still have a greater predisposition than young men to make sacrifices in the future in their working careers in order to achieve a better work–family balance. Moreover, having a high degree of leadership aspirations and belonging to an egalitarian household tend to reduce the inclination to sacrifice career opportunities, whereas having a high inclination to be involved in childcare in the future and having the perception of a future work–family conflict tend to increase it. Gender attitudes have a differential effect on female and male students: having traditional gender attitudes tends to increase the inclination to sacrifice career opportunities in the case of female students and reduce it in the case of male students.

Testing for Glass Ceiling: An Application to the Spanish Labour Market

The main objective of this paper is to quantify gender inequality in regards to the Spanish labour market. Using this quantification in each level of promotion, we test the hypothesis of glass ceiling in the promotion of women. To achieve our aim, we follow the pseudo Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition methodology on ordered probit models. We use data from the 2001 Spanish Survey on Quality of Life at Work to estimate to what extent the differences observed between men and women in each level of promotion indicators (wages, number of promotions, levels of supervision, number of workers supervised) can be explained by differences in male and female endowments (age, number of children, marital status, mean workweek hours, size of the company, education attainment, etc.) and to what extent they are explained by other factors (gender discrimination or professional self-censoring). The results indicate that controlling for differences in observable characteristics, the gender gap in promotion tends to increase as the level of promotion rises. This might be taken as an evidence of a glass ceiling problem in the Spanish labour market.

Savings, taxation and growth: the case of European Union countries

This paper examines the effects of saving and public capital on economic growth, developing a growth model and empirically investigates the role of these two variables for the European Union countries. The results show a non-homogenous situation in these countries. Using the Ordinary Least Square method, estimation results show that in the case of France, Germany, Greece, Spain, Sweeden and the United Kingdom, the saving variable has an unexpected sign and is only significant in the case of the United Kingdom. Regarding public capital results, only five countries France, Germany, Luxemburg, Netherlands and Spain, show a positive relationship.

Relationship between trade openness and economic growth in Latin America: A causality analysis with heterogeneous panel data

We empirically analyze the causality relationship between economic growth and international trade using new advancements in the econometric methodology for heterogeneous panel data applied to Latin American countries. First, we test for dependencies between the units of cross†section (countries) and then we test for cointegration between growth and openness. Finally, we test for Granger causality using a heterogeneous panel data test. The results reject the hypothesis of general, unidirectional, and homogeneous relationship between trade openness and economic growth in Latin American countries as a group. However, considering heterogeneity, we found significant evidence of causality from trade liberalization to economic growth in Chile, Peru, Nicaragua, and Uruguay; we have found bidirectional causality in Mexico and Honduras; and a causal relationship from economic growth to trade liberalization in Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic.

Intermediarios del mercado de trabajo y eficacia de los métodos de búsqueda de empleo durante la crisis económica

Las elevadas tasas de paro que sufre la economia espanola justifican la busqueda de medidas que ayuden a mejorar las posibilidades de reinsercion laboral de los trabajadores desempleados. En este sentido, una eficaz intermediacion laboral entre oferentes y demandantes de trabajo resulta fundamental para reducir los tiempos de busqueda de empleo. En este trabajo se realiza un analisis de los diferentes intermediarios y mecanismos de busqueda de empleo durante la crisis economica. Se cuantificara cuales de estos metodos han sido los mas utilizados, y cuales resultaron mas eficaces para encontrar un empleo. Utilizaremos para ello los datos de una encuesta realizada durante el 2013 en la Comunidad de Madrid tanto a parados en busca de empleo, como a trabajadores que habian encontrado su empleo recientemente. Segun esta encuesta, los portales especificos de empleo de internet fueron los intermediarios mas utilizados por las personas paradas en busqueda de un empleo; por otra parte, los metodos con los que una mayor proporcion de trabajadores encontraron su empleo fueron los contactos directos personales y profesionales.