CEO's Culture and Firms' Leverage Decisions
研究了CEO的文化背景如何影响其杠杆决策，发现高掌控欲的CEO会减少债务，而高嵌入度的CEO会无意中追求目标资本结构。
ABSTRACT Debt mitigates agency problems between managers and stockholders by reducing free cashflows; yet, why managers voluntarily adopt debt discipline remains unclear. This paper examines how chief executive officers' (CEOs') managerial traits, shaped by national culture, influence leverage decisions. Analysing 3338 CEOs from 41 nationalities in 2280 US firms in Bloomberg 3000 index (from 2007 to 2024), we find that cultural values impact CEOs' perceptions of debt's costs/benefits. High‐mastery CEOs reduce debt regardless of current leverage, while highly embedded CEOs inadvertently pursue target capital structures. A non‐US CEO sample shows that cultural values are portable. Our findings are robust to sensitivity and endogeneity tests.