previously CESifo working paper

Are there benefits for firms to heterogeneity in decision-taking groups' observable characteristics? I exploit a gender quota in France imposed on boards as a unique shifter of this bundle. Using a multidimensional fuzzy difference-in-discontinuity and unique data on privately-held firms, I show that the law decreased board homogeneity in terms of gender, nationality, age and interlocks. I find this change to have increased firm profitability by 7 %. I decompose profit margin into all its components to identify the relevant margin of adjustment. I show that firms expand by hiring higher-skilled temporary external workers. The decreasing marginal return to new board members and persistence of my estimates suggest that heterogeneity in characteristics increases the board’s knowledge base rather beyond changes in ability or efforts. This is in line with types of managers being complementary inputs in the production function.

Are economically diverse cities more resilient? Building on the insights of a simple model of labor flows, we document using French data on worker moves that more diverse cities–occupationally or industrially–experience shallower decreases in gross outflows and smaller declines in employment following negative labor demand shocks. We then show that such data also allows us to measure the implied insurance value of a city using a sufficient-statistics approach in a canonical random utility dynamic discrete choice model across sectors, occupations, and cities. The diversity of outside options impact a worker’s welfare. We find that there is a correlation between a city’s economic diversity and its insurance value against labor demand shocks.