Graduation Year

2026

Date of Submission

4-2026

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Economics

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Peter Kelly

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© 2026 Maram Sharif

Abstract

Although board gender quotas have generated substantial debate, we still know relatively little about how financial markets and firm performance respond when such mandates are introduced outside the most studied European settings. This thesis examines the United Arab Emirates’ 2021 requirement that listed public joint-stock companies appoint at least one woman to their boards. Using hand-collected board data matched to firm-level financial and stock-price information, I compare firms with and without pre-existing female board representation before the mandate. I first study short-run investor responses through an event-study design using market-adjusted abnormal returns around the March 2021 announcement. I find little evidence of a statistically significant differential market reaction across treated and control firms, although some point estimates suggest somewhat more negative announcement effects for firms that initially had no women on their boards. I then estimate difference-in-differences models for return on assets and Tobin’s Q to assess whether the mandate affected operating performance or market valuation over the longer run. The results do not reveal measurable effects on either outcome, suggesting that the UAE quota did not generate clear short-run disruption or detectable medium-run performance changes, while leaving open the possibility that its most important effects operate through slower-moving changes in representation and norms.

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