We examine the contractual implications of lender trust in bank loan contracts. We measure a lender's trust using the average trust attitudes in the ancestral country of origin of its CEO. We find that banks with trusting CEOs charge lower loan rates. Furthermore, trusting lenders sanction...

We exploit variation in the cultural heritage across U.S. CEOs who are the children or grandchildren of immigrants to demonstrate that the cultural origins of CEOs matter for corporate outcomes. Following shocks to industry competition, firms led by CEOs who are second- or third-generation...

This study seeks to understand how executive director heterogeneity affects the performance of US banks. To measure the expected performance effects linked to director heterogeneity, we compute changes in the market valuation of banks linked to announcements of executive director appointments....