Marital Status and CEO Dismissal

Abstract

This working paper investigates whether the marital status of CEOs influences firms’ managerial retention decisions. Our preliminary results generally show that single CEOs are more prone to dismissal than married counterparts irrespective of firm performance. These results challenge the conventional wisdom that CEO dismissal results largely from firm performance issues. We run a battery of econometric tests with competing estimation models and/or alternative specifications of variables and find that the paper’s main findings persist. Efforts are underway to extend the scope of this research by disentangling the sources and interplay of socio-psychological biases that underpin this differential treatment.