This paper investigates how bank CEO risk-taking incentives influence bank lending decisions. Consistent with the existing CEO incentive literature, we find that CEOs with higher risk-taking incentives (vega) tend to relax their lending standards in bank loan contracts to pursue higher...

This study investigates the effect of similarity in risk attitudes between lenders and borrowers on loan contracting. We find that when banks and lenders have similar risk attitudes they are more likely to sign loan contracts. Moreover, such contracts are associated with lower spreads, longer...

Over a period that includes the 1998 Russian crisis and 2007-2009 financial crisis, banks with overconfident chief executive officers (CEOs) were more likely to weaken lending standards and increase leverage than other banks in advance of a crisis, making them more vulnerable to the shock of the...

We study whether bank CEO optimism (optimistic bank) plays a role in technological progress. We find that optimistic banks lend more to smaller/riskier firms and charge higher loan spreads to compensate for the higher risk exposures. More interestingly, these optimistic banks prefer lending to...