Gender and Connections among Wall Street Analysts

The authors examine how alumni ties with corporate boards differentially affect male and female analysts’ job performance and career outcomes. Connections improve analysts’ forecasting accuracy and recommendation impact, but the effect is two to three times as large for men as for women. Connections also contribute to analysts’ likelihood of being voted by institutional investors as “star” analysts, but act as a partial substitute to performance for men while a complement to performance for women. Evidence indicates that men reap higher benefits from connections than women in both job performance and the subjective evaluation by others.