Your Gender Identity Is Who You Are: Female CEOs and Corporate Debt Structure

Abstract

We examine the implications of CEO gender for corporate debt structure. After controlling for endogeneity, firms with female CEOs issue less debt than firms with male CEOs. Although both risk aversion and overconfidence may serve as the channel of our main finding, we show that female CEOs being more risk averse is the underlying mechanism. Further, we find that the CEO gender effect is more pronounced for firms with younger CEOs, higher litigation risk, and more market competition. We also find that firms with female CEOs are more likely to keep positive debt capacity and have longer debt maturities.

Keywords: Gender, CEO, Debt Structure, Risk Aversion

JEL Classification: G12, G32, G34, J16