We examine the dynamics of corporate investment in Germany during the 2000s, a period marked by stagnant macroeconomic investment spending. Employing a mixed-methods approach, we explore investment trends across national accounts data, firm-level financials, and responses from financial...

We examine differences in political ideology between audit partners and Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) and the impact of these differences on financial reporting quality. These individuals cooperate to jointly produce the audited financial statements, and yet there is limited archival...

We examine whether the characteristics of chief financial officers (CFOs) are associated with real earnings management (REM). Using hand-collected data on CFOs’ characteristics, we find that female CFOs and highly visible CFOs are associated with lower levels of REM, while CFOs with an MBA or...

This study investigates the association between the power of Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) and the readability of financial narrative disclosures in annual reports. As CFOs are ultimately responsible for the quality of annual financial reporting, I expect that by empowering CFOs, they are able...

We find that firms led by Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) who are relatively more concerned about their future job prospects are less likely to take actions that result in poor discretionary quality reporting during an Initial Public Offering (IPO). In addition, our results show that CFOs with...

We use a survey approach to investigate how managers in a frontier market apply financing and dividend decision techniques in practice. 15 firm characteristics were grouped into paired subgroups for a two-sample t-test analysis that generated statistical differences, economic significance levels...

The prior literature on role congruity theory has revolved around demographic-based expectations, emphasizing role incongruity derived from a mismatch between prescriptive expectations of distinct roles. In this paper, we depart from this traditional focus on between-role incongruity and explore...

The Chief Financial Officer (CFO) is charged with managing activities central to the firm’s solvency, such as capital structure decisions and working capital management. However, CFOs are not often promoted to the top position of Chief Executive Officer (CEO). We provide evidence that the...

We ask whether CFO's managerial skills affect corporate tax avoidance using a sample of Chinese-listed companies. To that end, we develop a CFO managerial skills index based on four dimensions of the CFO's work experience: (1) the number of current positions a CFO holds, (2) the number of...

Treating receipt of a national-level CFO award as a shock to job-market status, I use a regression discontinuity design (RDD) to investigate the role of the CFO labor market in enhancing financial reporting quality. Compared to nominees who came close to winning the award, awardee CFOs have a...

The 2006 SEC rule, by changing the definition of Named Executive Officers, mandates CFO compensation disclosure. Using this setting and a difference-in-differences research design, we study the real effects of CFO compensation disclosure regulation on CFO job performance. We hypothesize that the...

A key objective of shareholder activists is to persuade a firm’s management to change its strategy. CFOs play an important role in negotiations, nonetheless activism research mainly focuses on CEOs. We examine the relationship between CFO overconfidence and the likelihood to get targeted by...

Although some view the hiring of interim executives as evidence of poor governance, this practice is becoming increasingly common. Because interims represent 15 to 20 percent of all chief financial officer (CFO) appointments and because CFOs are central to financial reporting and strategic...

This paper conducts surveys that document CFO perspectives on corporate planning, corporate investment, capital structure, payout, and the goal of the firm. Current policy choices are compared to CFO survey data from two decades prior, which allows me to identify decision-making themes that are...

Through close interactions with their CEO and CFO, independent directors as well as subordinate executives can assess the overconfidence of their CEO and CFO. We show that independent directors and subordinate executives trade on this assessment, albeit differently. Independent directors of a...

Industry, firm, CEO, CFO, and time effects are likely to have a significant influence on a firm’s financial reporting quality (FRQ). However, our understanding of the extent to which each of these factors affects different facets of FRQ remains limited. In this paper, we employ hierarchical...

This paper examines the effectiveness of the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) in managing working capital (WC) days. We investigate female CFOs in US-listed firms given the recent surge in the literature on their significance in the corporate boardroom and show that female CFOs are associated with...

Companies have been encouraged by policy to place women on board and top management positions. Proposals from regulators and governance reforms explicitly stress the importance of gender diversity in the boardroom. This paper analyzes the impact of the presence of women in executive and...

We find that the perverse effect of equity incentives on financial misreporting is weaker for older chief financial officers (CFOs) than for younger CFOs. We attribute this to differences in risk preferences associated with age. Consistent with our attribution, we find that the difference is...

This study explores the relationship between CFO qualifications and a firm's internal control weakness (ICWs). We use three measures for CFO competence: financial/accounting back- ground, seniority, and education. Using a sample of Taiwanese listed firms from 2012 to 2015, the results of this...

This paper conducts surveys that document CFO perspectives on corporate planning, corporate investment, capital structure, payout, and the goal of the firm. Current policy choices are compared to CFO survey data from two decades prior, which allows me to identify decision-making themes that are...

"Financial management encompasses a set of complex activities that should be performed by a professional financial manager. Some financial decisions are riskier than others, and as such can result in higher or lower profitability. This risk-return trade-off is the key aspect of financial...

We examine gender differences in the language of CFOs that participate in quarterly earnings calls. Female executives are more concise, less optimistic, are clearer, use fewer idioms or clichés, and provide more numbers in their speech. These differences are particularly strong in the more...

Analyzing the language styles of top executives using conference call transcripts, we find that the language style matching between the CEO and the CFO can predict CFO turnover. Using the CEO-CFO pair fixed effects, we find that the mimicry component of language style matching is negatively...