Sissel Jensen

Breaking the Glass Ceiling? The Effect of Board Quotas on Female Labor Market Outcomes in Norway

In late 2003, Norway passed a law mandating 40 percent representation of each gender on the board of publicly limited liability companies. The primary objective of this reform was to increase the representation of women in top positions in the corporate sector and decrease gender disparity in earnings within that sector. We document that the newly (post-reform) appointed female board members were observably more qualified than their female predecessors, and that the gender gap in earnings within boards fell substantially. While the reform may have improved the representation of female employees at the very top of the earnings distribution (top 5 highest earners) within firms that were mandated to increase female participation on their board, there is no evidence that these gains at the very top trickled-down. Moreover the reform had no obvious impact on highly qualified women whose qualifications mirror those of board members but who were not appointed to boards. We observe no statistically significant change in the gender wage gaps or in female representation in top positions, although standard errors are large enough that we cannot rule economically meaningful gains. Finally, there is little evidence that the reform affected the decisions of women more generally; it was not accompanied by any change in female enrollment in business education programs, or a convergence in earnings trajectories between recent male and female graduates of such programs. While young women preparing for a career in business report being aware of the reform and expect their earnings and promotion chances to benefit from it, the reform did not affect their fertility and marital plans. Overall, in the short run the reform had very little discernible impact on women in business beyond its direct effect on the newly appointed female board members.

Crime and punishment: When tougher antitrust enforcement leads to higher overcharge

The economics of crime and punishment postulates that higher punishment leads to lower crime levels, or less severe crime. It is how- ever hard to get empirical support for this rather intuitive relationship. This paper offers a model that can contribute to explain why this is the case. We show that if criminals can spend resources to reduce the probability of being detected, then a higher general punishment level can increase the crime level. In the context of antitrust enforcement, the model shows that competition authorities who attempt to fight cartels by means of tougher sanctions for all offenders may actually lead cartels to increase their overcharge when leniency programs are in place.

Two-part tariffs with quality degradation ☆

This paper examines a firms incentive to sell a service that is of lower quality when the firm offers a menu of two-part tariffs. Each tariff is characterized by a fixed fee together with two screening instruments, these being a uniform per unit charge and a quality restriction. We find that allocation of quality is monotonic in type, while per unit charge might be non-monotonic. The results thus contradict one of the most established insights in nonlinear pricing, that the per unit charge should be monotonically decreasing over the type space. We show that this practice increases welfare due to increased consumption efficiency.

Breaking the Glass Ceiling? The Effect of Board Quotas on Female Labour Market Outcomes in Norway

In late 2003, Norway passed a law mandating 40% representation of each gender on the board of public limited liability companies. The primary objective of this reform was to increase the representation of women in top positions in the corporate sector and decrease the gender disparity in earnings within that sector. We document that the women appointed to these boards post-reform were observably more qualified than their female predecessors along many dimensions, and that the gender gap in earnings within boards fell substantially. However, we see no robust evidence that the reform benefited the larger set of women employed in the companies subject to the quota. Moreover, the reform had no clear impact on highly qualified women whose qualifications mirror those of board members but who were not appointed to boards. Finally, we find mixed support for the view that the reform affected the decisions of young women. While the reform was not accompanied by any change in female enrollment in business education programmes, we do see some improvements in labour market outcomes for young women with graduate business degrees in their early career stages; however, we observe similar improvements for young women with graduate science degrees, suggesting this may not be due to the reform. Overall, seven years after the board quota policy fully came into effect, we conclude that it had very little discernible impact on women in business beyond its direct effect on the women who made it into boardrooms.

Two-part Pricing, Consumer Heterogeneity and Cournot Competition

We analyze two-part tariffs in oligopoly, where each firm commits to a certain quantity. The model is an extension of the one introduced in Harrison and Kline (2001).We show that their main results are reversed when the model is extended from one to two types of consumers.

The Comparison between Ad Valorem and Specific Taxation under Two-Part Tariffs

In this paper, we compare ad valorem and specific taxation under heterogeneous demand when a monopolist offers a menu of two-part tariffs. An increase in either tax rate leads to a higher usage fee for all consumers, whereas the fixed fee under reasonable assumptions will fall. If the government changes the mix of taxes in such a way that the firm’s behavior is unchanged, a system of wholly ad valorem taxation generates higher tax revenue than does a system of wholly specific taxes. Tax reform designed to leave tax revenue constant leads to a lower per usage fee and a higher fixed fee for all consumers. It also increases market coverage, profits, tax revenue, and the consumer surplus.