Behavioral Consistency in Corporate Finance: CEO Personal and Corporate Leverage
Robert Day School of Economics and Finance Research Paper No. 2009-05
Fisher College of Business Working Paper No. 2009-03-04
Charles A. Dice Center Working Paper No. 2009-4
51 Pages Posted: 24 Apr 2009 Last revised: 13 Mar 2011
Date Written: March 11, 2011
Abstract
We find that firms behave consistently with how their CEOs behave personally in the context of leverage choices. Analyzing data on CEOs' leverage in their most recent primary home purchases, we find a positive, economically relevant, robust relation between corporate and personal leverage in the cross-section and when examining CEO turnovers. The results are consistent with an endogenous matching of CEOs to firms based on preferences, as well as with CEOs imprinting their personal preferences on the firms they manage, particularly when governance is weaker. Besides enhancing our understanding of the determinants of corporate capital structures, the broader contribution of the paper is to show that CEOs' personal behavior can, in part, explain corporate financial behavior of the firms they manage.
Keywords: Corporate finance, behavioral consistency theory, CEO personal leverage, corporate leverage
JEL Classification: G32; G34
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?
Recommended Papers
-
Who Makes Acquisitions? CEO Overconfidence and the Market's Reaction
-
On the Evolution of Overconfidence and Entrepreneurs
By Antonio E. Bernardo and Ivo Welch
-
Market Timing and Managerial Portfolio Decisions
By Dirk Jenter
-
Behavioral Corporate Finance: A Survey
By Malcolm P. Baker, Richard S. Ruback, ...
-
Behavioral Corporate Finance: A Survey
By Malcolm P. Baker, Richard S. Ruback, ...
-
Behavioral Corporate Finance: A Survey
By Malcolm P. Baker, Richard S. Ruback, ...