Overconfidence, CEO Selection, and Corporate Governance

We develop a model which shows that an overconfident manager, who sometimes makes value-destroying investments, nonetheless has a higher likelihood than a rational manager of being deliberately promoted to CEO under value-maximizing corporate governance. Moreover, a risk-averse CEO's overconfidence enhances firm value up to a point, but the effect is non-monotonic and differs from that of lower risk aversion. Overconfident CEOs also underinvest in information production. The board fires both excessively diffident and excessively overconfident CEOs. Finally, Sarbanes-Oxley is predicted to improve the precision of information provided to investors, but reduce project investment