We study CEOs with a career background in finance. Firms with financial expert CEOs hold less cash, more debt, and engage in more share repurchases. Financial expert CEOs are more financially sophisticated: they are less likely to use one companywide discount rate instead of a project-specific...

I estimate the effect of uncertainty on risky innovation using a panel of 11,417 manufacturing firms. I find that an increase in uncertainty has a large negative effect on the risky innovation of entrepreneurial firms, while it does not have any significant impact on other firms. This negative...