We examine the implications of CEO gender for corporate debt structure. After controlling for endogeneity, firms with female CEOs issue less debt than firms with male CEOs. Although both risk aversion and overconfidence may serve as the channel of our main finding, we show that female CEOs being...

Using a large sample of executives in S&P1500 firms over 1996-2010, we document significant salary and total compensation gaps between female and male executives and explore two possible explanations for the gaps. We find support for greater female risk aversion as one contributing factor....