Counterparty Responses to Managerial Overconfidence

Existing research links CEO personality traits to a number of corporate decisions including overinvestment, external acquisitions, and earnings management. These findings raise the question of whether counterparties distinguish between differences in individual CEO behavior, and how they respond to...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: HRIBAR, Paul, KIM, Jaewoo, WILSON, Ryan, YANG, Holly I-Hwa
Format: text
Language:English
Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2012
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soa_research/1165
https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soa_research/article/2164/viewcontent/HKWY_20May_202012_Chicago.pdf
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Institution: Singapore Management University
Language: English
Description
Summary:Existing research links CEO personality traits to a number of corporate decisions including overinvestment, external acquisitions, and earnings management. These findings raise the question of whether counterparties distinguish between differences in individual CEO behavior, and how they respond to it. We focus on two key counterparties – auditors and credit rating agencies – and examine whether audit fees and credit ratings are affected by CEO overconfidence. We find a positive association between audit fees and CEO overconfidence, suggesting that auditors exert more effort or increase the risk premium associated with auditing firms with more overconfident CEOs. We also find a significant negative association between CEO overconfidence and credit ratings, suggesting that overconfident CEOs are associated with higher agency costs of debt and higher credit risk.