The Gender Effects of COVID: Evidence from Equity Analysts

Abstract

We use COVID-19 and sell-side analysts as an experiment to study the effects of gender on labor productivity. We find that the forecast accuracy of female analysts declined more than that of male analysts, especially when schools were closed, and among analysts who were more likely to have young children, were inexperienced, busier, and lived in southern states of the US. Relative to male analysts, females also reduced forecast timeliness and resorted to more heuristic forecasts but did not reduce coverage or updating frequency. Relative to pre-pandemic, female analysts' careers were also more negatively affected than male analysts. Overall, our results show that the pandemic impacted female analysts more than males through the quality of their forecasts but not the quantity.

Keywords: COVID-19, pandemic, financial analysts, gender gap, decision heuristics JEL Code: G14, G20, J16, J24, J32, J4 COVID-19

JEL Classification: G14, G20, J16, J24, J32, J44