Gender diversity in corporate governance has become an increasingly important focus of academic and policy interest. While significant strides have been made in the representation of women across various managerial roles, the corporate boardroom remains a domain where gender disparities continue to persist. 

This dissertation explores whether male board directors’ family dynamics -- particularly having daughters -- affect their professional decision-making processes, specifically in the appointment of female executives. Central to this inquiry, and examined empirically, is the question of whether such behavioral patterns are consistent with the rational assumptions of complete and transitive preferences that underpin classical economic theory and decision-making models.

The thesis spans four papers: the first two explore "the daughter effect" within the context of Swedish corporate governance, while the third examines these empirical findings from a theoretical perspective, drawing on both traditional economic and neuroeconomic frameworks.

In the fourth paper, I propose a tax-deductible policy incentive designed to encourage firms to increase and invest in female participation in top management. Drawing on principles of optimal taxation theory, I introduce the Gender Equality Reserve (GER), a fiscal incentive allowing firms to deduct pre-tax investments in gender-focused organizational capital. A stylized neoclassical model illustrates how informational frictions and externalities lead to suboptimal levels of inclusive governance. By lowering the effective cost of such investments, the GER partially internalizes their social benefits and incentivizes firm behavior to move toward the socially optimal level of gender diversity in leadership structures, all while preserving firms' organizational autonomy and decision-making independence.

Könsdiversitet i företagsstyrning har blivit ett allt viktigare fokusområde. Även om betydande framsteg har gjorts när det gäller kvinnors representation i olika ledande roller, är företagsstyrelser fortfarande en domän där könsskillnader fortsätter att vara påtagliga. 

Denna avhandling undersöker sambandet mellan manliga styrelseledamöters familjedynamik, särskilt faderskap och att ha döttrar, och deras professionella beslutsfattande, med särskilt fokus utnämningen av kvinnliga chefer. Centralt för denna undersökning är frågan om hur dessa empiriska resultat stämmer överens med den rationella antagandet om fullständiga och transitiva preferenser, som ligger till grund för klassisk ekonomisk teori och fungerar som ett fundamentalt princip i modelleringen av beslutsfattande processer. 

Avhandlingen omfattar fyra artiklar: de två första utforskar dottereffekten inom ramen för svensk företagsstyrning, medan den tredje granskar dessa empiriska resultat från ett teoretiskt perspektiv, baserat på både traditionella ekonomiska och neuroekonomiska ramverk. I den fjärde artikeln föreslår jag ett skattemässigt incitament för att uppmuntra företag att öka och investera i kvinnlig representation på toppledningsnivå. Specifikt undersöks möjligheten att införa en jämställdhetsfond för att främja långsiktiga investeringar i human kapital och mångfald inom bolagsstyrning i Sverige.

This study examines executive attitudes toward gender equality in corporate leadership using original survey data from senior male directors and female angel investors in Sweden. Situated in a policy context where gender-balanced boards have been achieved through voluntary - rather than mandatory - measures, the analysis explores how personal experiences shape support for diversity initiatives. Results show that gender-diverse boards are widely viewed as beneficial to organizational performance, yet support for regulatory quotas remains divided. Male executives with daughters exhibit significantly greater support for equality policies, reinforcing the "daughter effect" documented in earlier research. Female angel investors emphasize persistent structural barriers, citing exclusion from networks and limited access to mentorship. By offering rare insight into elite perspectives, this study contributes to corporate governance literature and identifies micro-level mechanisms that shape institutional change.

This paper investigates how fathering a daughter can endogenously shift male corporate board members' preferences toward gender-inclusive executive appointments, a phenomenon known as the "daughter effect." While previous research has empirically documented this effect, its implications for rational choice theory remain underexplored. This study develops a theoretical framework that integrates behavioral and neuroeconomic insights into classical decision theory to show that such emotionally driven shifts in preference can remain consistent with rational choice -- so long as completeness and transitivity are preserved. The analysis leverages Swedish register data on CEO appointments and proposes a neuroeconomic model in which personal experiences modify salience weights within utility functions. These evolving, context-sensitive preferences are framed not as departures from rationality but as adaptive responses within an intertemporal utility-maximizing structure. By bridging empirical data, formal economic modeling, and insights from neuroscience, this paper advances our understanding of how identity and emotion can reshape economic behavior without violating foundational theoretical axioms. Implications span corporate governance, gender equity, and the evolution of rational agency.

Appointing a female CEO is an endogenous decision shaped by firm-specific preferences and organizational characteristics, which makes it challenging to identify the causal drivers of gender diversity in executive leadership. This paper examines whether male board directors with daughters are more likely to support the appointment of female CEOs. Drawing on matched employer-employee data from approximately 7,000 Swedish SMEs, I find that firms with a higher share of daughter-having male directors are significantly more likely to appoint a female CEO. To mitigate concerns about reverse causality, the analysis includes robustness checks focusing on directors whose daughters were born after their board appointment. These findings suggest that the gender composition of directors' children may serve as a quasi-exogenous predictor of CEO gender and could be leveraged in future research. However, limitations remain, particularly concerning residual endogeneity and the specificity of the Swedish context.

This paper develops a theoretical framework for addressing underinvestment in gender-inclusive leadership through corporate tax policy. Drawing on optimal taxation theory, I introduce the Gender Equality Reserve (GER) -- a fiscal instrument that allows firms to deduct pre-tax investments in gender-focused organizational capital. A stylized neoclassical model demonstrates how informational frictions and externalities result in inefficiently low levels of inclusive governance. By reducing the effective cost of such investments, the GER partially internalizes their social returns and shifts firm behavior toward the social optimum. The mechanism provides both normative and efficiency-based justifications for policy design and is especially relevant for sectors undergoing institutional transformation, such as energy and technology. This analysis contributes to the literature on tax design and inclusive growth, and supports broader Sustainable Development Goals related to gender equality (SDG 5) and decent work (SDG 8).