This study examines the relation between managerial risk tolerance and corporate credit ratings. Using pilot licensing status as a proxy for managerial risk tolerance, we find that firms led by pilot CEOs receive worse credit ratings, suggesting that highly risk-tolerant CEOs impair their...

We document that African-American executives, on average, earn zero abnormal profits frominsider trades, in contrast to Asian-American and Caucasian executives who earn significantlypositive abnormal profits. We also find that these differences cannot be attributed to differencesin industry,...

We find that CEOs engage in the political system through personal contributions when they face an increased risk of SEC enforcement. CEOs of firms with regulatory violations almost double their personal campaign contributions during violation years, and these increased contributions are directed...

We examine how chief executive officers' (CEOs) innate risk aversion influences the size and structure of their compensation contracts. In so doing, we estimate managerial risk aversion based on the Big Five personality traits—openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and...

Utilizing a large sample of US chief financial officers (CFOs), we show that both personality and gender of CFOs are significant determinants of their remuneration. Controlling for ‘Big Five’ personality traits does not eliminate the differential in compensation between male and female CFOs

We examine whether gender diversity of chief executive and chief financial officers (CEOs and CFOs) is associated with financial reporting quality. The CEOs and CFOs of publicly traded companies are both required to certify the appropriateness of their financial statements and annual...

We utilize the IBM Watson Personality Insights service to analyze CEOs' verbal communication during conference calls to infer CEOs' Big Five personality traits, which we employ to estimate their risk tolerance levels. We then explore whether the misalignment of CEO risk tolerance and governance...