Motivated by studies that show overconfident agents are more competitive, we test whether overconfident CEOs respond differently and perform better when competition increases. Using tariff reductions as exogenous shocks to competition and a triple-difference specification on matched samples, we...

Initial public offering (IPO) underpricing is positively correlated with managerial confidence. We hypothesize that highly overconfident managers, who tend to overvalue their own firm, use underpricing to signal their beliefs to the market in an effort to receive greater value for their shares...