Does labor mobility affect top management gender choices?

: evidence from non-competition agreements

Abstract

The phenomenon of discrimination is understood as having different causes, one of them being information-based. This theory suggests that the lack of individual-specific information leads people to judge others based on the perceived (and potentially biased) characteristics of the groups they belong to. Exploiting the fact that companies possess more accurate information about their current employees than about outside prospective ones, we utilize changes to non-competition agreement law, which determine the viability of hiring external employees, to assess the existence of gender discrimination in top management positions. We find results consistent with information based discrimination theory.

Date of Award	20 Feb 2017
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Geraldo Cerqueiro (Supervisor)