We examine insider trading profitability and common identity between insiders and top executives. We argue that common gender and the resulting social connections influence access to private information, wherby insiders benefit from greater information-sharing with top executives of the same gender. Using a large sample of US firms between 1995 and 2016, we find higher (lower) insider trading profitability for female (male) insiders in the presence of a female CEO or CFO. We also find that, in isolation, other social and professional commonalities, such as age, ethnicity, having attended the same university or having worked at the same firm also increase insider profitability, albeit to a lesser extent. Our evidence suggests that some of these commonalities enhance the common gender effect when combined with it. We examine formal interactions and find that attending meetings and serving on committees with top executives of the same gender enables private information-sharing, consistent with gender acting as an informational channel. We also document greater clustering of insiders' trades around the trades made by common gender top executives. Our findings are consistent with flows of private information from CEOs and CFOs to less informed common gender insiders.

Recent research in accounting suggests female directors exert more stringent monitoring over the financial reporting process than their male counterparts. However, an emerging literature in finance and economics provides mixed findings and questions whether females in leadership roles significantly differ from their male counterparts. Building on this literature, we re-examine the link between the presence of female directors, gender biases, and financial statements quality. Using a large sample of UK firms we find that a larger percentage of women among independent directors is significantly associated with lower earnings management practices. However, we show that this relation disappears if we focus on firms that do not discriminate against women in the access to directorships. Finally, we provide evidence that gender biases are associated with lower earnings quality. We interpret our results as consistent with (1) prior evidence that males and females do not differ substantially when performing the same role in highly specialized positions, and with (2) discrimination being an important factor explaining the association between female directors and accounting quality.

We examine disasters caused by individual firms with severe environmental impacts. These disasters trigger industry-wide demand for corporate social responsibility (CSR). We analyze whether affected firms respond by adopting substantive or symbolic CSR measures. We find that firms increase overall CSR performance through improvements in diversity and human rights rather than decreasing environmental concerns. This suggests firms prioritize symbolic CSR to legitimize their operations rather than substantive measures to mitigate environmental harm. We also document diverging costs and welfare effects. On average, substantive CSR actions are costlier and cause lower margins but avoid divestments by ESG-oriented funds while improving long-term credit ratings. Some of these benefits of substantive actions also accrue through symbolic actions at a lower cost.