Programa del congreso

Production in agricultural firms can be severely affected by the frequency and duration of extreme climate events, which can cause losses due to their impact on business-related natural capital. Physical climate effects are material dependencies for agricultural businesses that may severely affect performance and compromise survival. This study analyzes the effects of adverse climatic conditions in the area of the firm's headquarters, such as extreme maximum temperatures, heavy precipitation, and fires. Using logit regressions and the gradient-boosting ensemble method, agricultural firms' bankruptcy is found to be conditioned by these extreme weather events, indicating that the physical effects of climate change on firms' resources are already material for the agricultural sector's resilience and survival, although credit risk management still receives little attention.

• Objetivos: We aim to answer two questions in an effort to enhance current knowledge of the corporate social irresponsibility (CSI)-board gender diversity relationship: 1) How does the gender diversity of the board of directors in corporate social irresponsibility episodes affect the presence of dominant owners? 2) Does the effect of female directors in CSI episodes change as their number on the board of directors increases?

• Marco teórico: Agency theory, stakeholder theory, corporate hypocrisy perspective.

• Metodología: 2SLS, propensity score matching and GMM.

• Resultados/implicaciones: Our results show an inverted U-shaped relationship between female directors and CSI, supporting arguments that dominant owners might appoint a small number of female directors symbolically in order to create a "halo effect" or to enhance their public image and thus reinforce their entrenchment and divert attention from CSI episodes. However, the appointment of a critical mass of female directors shows the commitment of the dominant owners to move away from irresponsible corporate practices, as the presence of a larger number of female directors encourages the firm's ethical behaviour and increases the costs of penalising the CSI episodes in the face of the firm's hypocritical behaviour.

• Objetivos: We examine the female directors-cost of debt relationship in a continental European environment where –as in most countries– the conflict of interest between dominant owners and minority shareholders is prevalent.

• Marco teórico: Agency Theory, Socioemotional wealth perspective.

• Metodología: 2LSLS, GMM and PSM models.

• Resultados/implicaciones: our results show that female directors have an impact on a higher cost of debt until they reach a critical mass, after which their effect on the price of financing is negative. Moreover, the presence of family ties among female directors influences their effect on the cost of debt, such that while a small number of female family directors reduces conflicts with creditors, the presence of a critical mass of female directors with family ties increases the cost of financing. Our findings indicate that dominant owners may appoint female directors for different purposes, thereby affecting the level of conflict with creditors.

Using a firm-level database covering 49 countries during the period 2010-2021, we investigate how the structure of banking systems affects the cash holdings for private firms. The results show that cash holdings increase in countries with high bank concentration in line with market power hypothesis since it more cost for firms to access debt. We also find cash holdings increasing with bank profitability and decreasing with bank solvency and the percentage of private credit fo deposit money banks to GDP.