Do Female–Owned Employment Agencies Mitigate Discrimination and Expand Opportunity for Women?

We are very grateful to our research assistants—Jessica Madeira, Amit Singh, Kihwan Bae, Marcelo Jaimes–Lukes, Fiona Ambrosio, Dev Devnani, David Hom, Samuel Fang, Somya Jain, Meghna Dutta, and Tshahi Mombrun—and Latoya Sherd and Michelle Howard at the New York County Clerk's Office for help gathering the data. For valuable insights into agency operation from 1969 and accounting–related occupations in the 1950s, we thank two female agency owners (Miki Fiegel and an anonymous owner) and John Hunt respectively. We thank Laura Gee, Ryan Nunn, Martin Saavedra and seminar participants at Kings College London, Laurier University, the London School of Economics, Northwestern University, Rutgers University, the Universities of Delaware, Milan, St. Andrews, Sydney, and Zurich, the 2019 Engelberg SKILS conference and the IZA 25th Anniversary Conference in Berlin for comments. Jennifer Hunt is also affiliated with the CEPR (London), and the IZA (Bonn). The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

• April 25, 2024