Girl Power: Creating More with Less

Sonja Radas

“This study explores the performance of women-owned and men-owned firms in relation to business uncertainty. While most previous research suggests that men-owned firms outperform women-owned firms in terms of output measures, this study focuses on the level of uncertainty in the business environment. Using a panel dataset spanning 10 years in the period 2010 – 2019 and examining micro-enterprises in Croatia, Slovenia, and Slovakia, the study suggests that female-owned micro-enterprises may outperform their male-owned counterparts in economically uncertain environments. This advantage holds true not only when comparing countries with varying levels of economic uncertainty but also during periods of heightened uncertainty within each country. These findings contribute to understanding gender-based performance differences and highlight the potential for women-owned firms to excel in uncertain business environment.”

About the speaker:

Sonja Radas is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Economics Zagreb, Croatia, and a Research Affiliate at the MIT Sloan School of Management. She received her PhD in mathematics from the University of Florida, Gainesville, in 1994, and her PhD In Business Administration from the same university in 1996. From 1996 to 2002 she was on the faculty of Olin School of Business, Washington University in St. Louis. Her longstanding area of interest is innovation economics, but recently she became interested in behavioral economics. From 2015–2018 she was a Marie Curie IOF Fellow of the EU-REA at MIT.