Hamilton professor of economics, Ann Owen, recently traveled to Madrid to present her research on gender dynamics in the bank industry. Owen’s Paper “Board of Directors’ Networks, Gender, and Firm Performance in a Male-Dominated Industry: Evidence from U.S. Banking,” focuses on how the social networks within the board of directors at banks influence bank performance. Owen conducted this research in collaboration with Hamilton alum and current Economics PhD candidate at Cornell, Andrew Wei and former Hamilton economics student Judit Temesvary who now works at the Federal Reserve. Owen noted that this research project itself reflects the strength of Hamilton College’s very own social network.

Owen articulated the main objectives of this research study which was to “examine how performance of a bank is influenced by the professional and social networks of the members of its board of directors.” She then explained that they found that “connections of women improve bank performance, but connections between men are associated with worse performance.” The reason behind this finding, Owen explained, is that “women are very underrepresented on bank boards and these connections may be a way that they gain influence.” This paper was the third paper in a series that examined the impact of gender diversity in the banking industry. Owen explained that the first paper, which was published in 2018, involved the use of a dataset that “allows us to examine the characteristics and connections of thousands of bank board of directors of a 20 year period.” Because they are heavily regulated, there is an abundance of publicly available information regarding banks, which provided Owen and her research team with a strong dataset to analyze.

Owen noted that the broader question of this research is “about gender diversity at the higher levels of management. The work that we’ve done here is looking at the highest level, which is the board of directors.” Boards of the directors in the bank industry are heavily male dominated, with, on average only 20% of bank board members being female. “You go into the room and you are one of the very few women in the room. I personally have had that experience many times, being one of the few women in the room, especially because I am a macro-economist. So I’ve had many times where I’ve been feeling isolated.” Owen reflected. This research is interested in examining how this might impact the way that women become selected to serve on board of directors and also the impact on women’s ability to make a contribution. Overall, this research hinges on the question of whether diversity improves performance. Beyond performance, also, this research investigates whether diversity improves our ability to solve difficult problems.

There were several reasons behind Owen’s interest in this particular research question. Owen voiced that one reason for her interest in this research was “her own experience in the banking industry and in a male-dominated profession.” She also noted that academically she finds “the interdisciplinary connections between economics, sociology, and psychology really interesting.” Owen also articulated, on a more broad level, what underlies her interest in economics as a discipline. “I was interested in understanding more about how the world works, and in particular our economy. I really liked the mathematical approach that economics took. It made a lot of sense to me. I liked that economics had a structured way of thinking about the world.”

Owen then went on to reflect on her experience at the conference she attended in Madrid. She explained that “it was a very high quality conference, attended by both academics and central bankers from several different countries. It was a great audience for our work because many there were interested in discussing the policy implications.” Owen explained that she enjoyed engaging with other academics and receiving responses to her 2024research: “One of the good things about presenting in a conference like this is that you are assigned a discussant who reads your paper carefully and then provides detailed comments which are very helpful.” Reflecting on her favorite parts of the conference, Owen explained that she enjoyed being “able to discuss policy implications of my research with policy makers.” Owen found one researcher’s work at the conference to be particularly compelling: “During COVID, a lot of seminars were on Zoom…one researcher took video files and wrote a program that processed these files and counted the number of times that a female professor was speaking, how often she was interrupted versus a male professor…the women were interrupted more often than the men, and he had a way of categorizing the nature of the interruptions… and women professors were much more likely to be challenged.”

Owen also offered words of wisdom to women in the field of economics. She encouraged women to “do whatever you can to make yourself feel confident….you are smart, you are capable of doing this and do not let people push you around…don’t let people tell you that you shouldn’t be doing something” Beyond offering wisdom to women on how to manage their confidence, Owen acknowledged that there is a larger cultural issue at play that is preventing women from breaking into the field of economics: “What do you do to change the culture? Once you break through, you can do things to change the culture. And so that is about changing culture to make it easier for the next person.”