The sensitivity of stock options' payoff to return volatility, or vega, provides risk-averse CEOs with an incentive to increase their firms' risk more by increasing systematic rather than idiosyncratic risk. This effect manifests because any increase in the firm's systematic risk can be hedged...

This study extends the current state of research on corporate governance and firm value determinants by introducing culture as a proxy for risk aversion. We focus on individuals' risk aversion and connect it to Hofstede's cultural dimensions of uncertainty avoidance. In a cross-country empirical...