Inmaculada Martinez-Zarzoso on gender gap and firm performance in developing countries

Inmaculada Martinez-Zarzoso will present at the WIDER Seminar Series on 10 October 2019. 

Abstract – Gender gap and firm performance in developing countries

This paper uses firm-level data from the World Bank Enterprise Survey (WBES) to investigate productivity gaps between female and male-managed companies in developing countries and to compare the outcomes obtained for different regions in the world. We depart from the previous literature by using the gender of the top manager as target variable, which is newly available in the 2016 version of the WBES. The main results indicate that it is crucial to distinguish between female management and female ownership and also the confluence between both. We find that when females manage the firms and there are not female owners, they show a higher average labour productivity and TFP. However, if females are among the owners and a female is the top manager, then their productivity is lower than for other firms. These results are very heterogeneous among regions. In particular, results in  South Saharan Africa, East Asia and South Asia seems to be driving the general results, whereas in Latin America and Eastern Europe and Central Asia, female participation in ownership seems to be negatively related to firm performance. 

About the speaker

Inmaculada Martínez-Zarzoso is Apl Professor and chair of the U4 Network on Social Sciences Economics and Law at the University of Göttingen (Germany). She is board member of the Centre for Global Migration Studies, research fellow at the Center for Statistics and the Center for European Governance and Economic Development Research from the same university and board member of the International Network for Economic Research (INFER). She is also part-time Professor of Economics at the University Jaume I (Spain) and member of the Institute of International Economics (Spain) since 1995. She has advised the World Bank, the OECD, the German Ministry of Development and Cooperation, and the Spanish Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure.

Her fields of research include international economics, environmental economics and development economics. She is the author of two books and of numerous articles in international journals. Her current research interests are in the areas of development economics, deep and comprehensive  trade agreements, migration and remittances, networks and trade and sustainable global value chains. 

WIDER Seminar Series

The WIDER Seminar Series showcases recent and ongoing work on key topics in development economics. The weekly sessions held in Helsinki are open to local and visiting researchers, policy makers, and others interested in development topics. Click here to learn more.

Seminars will be live streamed on Facebook and recordings and presentations will be available after the event here.

For more information email richardson@wider.unu.edu