We examine the role of cultural heritage in shaping U.S. CEOs' attitudes toward uncertainty, in the context of their corporate acquisition decisions. We find that CEOs with a more uncertainty-avoiding cultural heritage are less likely to engage in acquisitions. Conditional on making an...

We examine the formation and evolution of corporate risk culture, i.e., the preferences towards risk and uncertainty shared by a firm's leaders, as well as its effect on corporate policies. We document persistent commonality in risk attitudes inside firms, which arises through the selection of...

We investigate the link between birth order and the career outcome of becoming Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of a company. CEOs are more likely to be the first-born, i.e., oldest, child of their family relative to what one would expect if birth order did not matter for career outcomes. Both male...

Based on a two-million-observation panel dataset that matches public firms with detailed data on their employees, we find that entrenched managers pay their workers more. For example, our estimates show that CEOs with more control rights (votes) than all other blockholders together, pay their...