Do CFO career concerns matter? Evidence from IPO financial reporting outcomes
研究发现，职业担忧更强的CFO在IPO中更谨慎地编制财务报表，且更抵制股东压力，其决策透明度更高，有助于提升IPO后业绩和职业前景。
We find that Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) with greater career concerns are more diligent and conservative in preparing financial statements during an Initial Public Offering (IPO). Additional tests exploiting exogenous variation in managerial career concerns suggest that our documented relations are not sensitive to unobservable omitted factors. Furthermore, we document that CFOs who are relatively more concerned about their future job prospects are more sensitive when there is greater scrutiny or higher litigation risk and are less likely to succumb to undue pressures from influential shareholders to exaggerate the firm's prospects. Finally, we show that CFOs with longer decision horizons prefer more transparency during the IPO process, which in turn, translates to superior post-IPO performance and better labor market outcomes than their counterparts. Overall, our findings indicate that career concerns play a disciplining role during IPOs and that CFOs exploit these high-visibility events to accelerate their career trajectory.