CEO Gender and Firm-to-Firm Transactions

While female CEOs are under-represented, the barriers they face in the business environment are not well-understood. Using unique transaction data of nearly 1 million Japanese firms, which contain the CEO gender, the authors of the paper presented in this ZEW Research Seminar find that CEOs are more likely to trade with CEOs of the same gender, mostly driven by small- and medium-sized firms. Because most CEOs are male, such same-gender bias reduces the trading opportunities for females relative to male CEOs. Furthermore, the survey of CEOs also revealed the existence of barriers that impede CEOs of opposite genders from meeting, and a tendency for male CEOs to prefer interacting with CEOs of the same gender.