Research

Working Papers

• 'Some Bonuses are Bigger than Others? Benchmark-beating Pressure and the Gender Pay Gap'  Job Market Paper
  Abstract: This paper presents evidence of the gendered effect of firm financial pressures on compensation. For identification, I examine the relation between the gender pay gap and managers’ pressure to meet earnings expectations (“benchmark-beating pressure”). Using a 2017 UK pay transparency mandate, I find that the gender gap in bonuses increases by 4.23 percentage points in firms that meet or just beat analyst forecasts, compared to firms that miss or comfortably beat analyst expectations, even after controlling for job roles. This suggests that benchmark-beating pressure exacerbates the gender pay gap, consistent with prior research indicating that women are less likely to resist bonus reductions. Cross-sectional tests further show that this phenomenon only manifests in companies that have limited workplace flexibility, low Environmental, Social, and Governance (“ESG”) scores, and a board with fewer than three female directors.

Works in Progress

• ‘In the Air Tonight: Accounting-driven Increased Pollution and Respiratory Morbidity’ with Asanish Kalyanasundaram

• ‘You Can’t Always Get the Rankings You Want: School Rankings as a Heuristic for Outcome Management’

• ‘Paint it, Concrete: A New Method of Measuring Specificity’ with Chi Ian Tang