Top management conservatism and corporate risk strategies: Evidence from managers' personal political orientation and corporate tax avoidance
研究发现，高管偏向共和党的企业比偏向民主党的企业避税更少，表明政治倾向可作为管理者保守主义的代理变量，并揭示避税是企业风险承担的一种体现。
We investigate whether managers' personal political orientation helps explain tax avoidance at the firms they manage. Results reveal the intriguing finding that, on average, firms with top executives who lean toward the R epublican P arty actually engage in less tax avoidance than firms whose executives lean toward the D emocratic P arty. We also examine changes in tax avoidance around CEO turnovers and find corroborating evidence. Additionally, we find that political orientation is helpful in explaining top management team composition and CEO succession. Our paper extends theory and research by (1) illustrating how tax avoidance can serve as another measure of corporate risk taking and (2) using political orientation as a proxy for managerial conservatism, which is an ex ante measure of a manager's propensity toward risk . Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.