Overconfident Male CEOs and Corporate Outcomes: The Moderating Role of Female CFOs
This paper investigates the moderating role of female CFOs on overconfident male CEOs’ behaviors, focusing on cash holdings, investment efficiency, and analysts’ forecast optimism. Analyzing a sample of Malaysian firms from 2016 to 2020, we find that overconfident male CEOs are associated with lower...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Journal Article |
| Published: |
Elsevier
2025
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/97765 |
| _version_ | 1848766311822262272 |
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| author | Abdul Wahab, Effiezal How, Janice Ismail, Ismaanzira |
| author_facet | Abdul Wahab, Effiezal How, Janice Ismail, Ismaanzira |
| author_sort | Abdul Wahab, Effiezal |
| building | Curtin Institutional Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | This paper investigates the moderating role of female CFOs on overconfident male CEOs’ behaviors, focusing on cash holdings, investment efficiency, and analysts’ forecast optimism. Analyzing a sample of Malaysian firms from 2016 to 2020, we find that overconfident male CEOs are associated with lower cash holdings, higher investment efficiency, and more optimistic analyst forecasts. Female CFOs moderate overinvestment tendencies, leading to more disciplined capital allocation, but their influence on cash holdings and forecast optimism is limited, likely due to organizational power dynamics and career constraints. Institutional factors further shape these dynamics — Bumiputera-dominated boards promote financial conservatism with higher cash reserves and forecast optimism but may limit female CFOs’ authority, while family firms exhibit reduced investment efficiency under overconfident leadership, reflecting a governance-control misalignment. These findings, robust to endogeneity concerns, highlight how leadership diversity and institutional structures interact to influence corporate financial outcomes. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T11:49:08Z |
| format | Journal Article |
| id | curtin-20.500.11937-97765 |
| institution | Curtin University Malaysia |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T11:49:08Z |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| publisher | Elsevier |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | curtin-20.500.11937-977652025-05-20T02:05:20Z Overconfident Male CEOs and Corporate Outcomes: The Moderating Role of Female CFOs Abdul Wahab, Effiezal How, Janice Ismail, Ismaanzira This paper investigates the moderating role of female CFOs on overconfident male CEOs’ behaviors, focusing on cash holdings, investment efficiency, and analysts’ forecast optimism. Analyzing a sample of Malaysian firms from 2016 to 2020, we find that overconfident male CEOs are associated with lower cash holdings, higher investment efficiency, and more optimistic analyst forecasts. Female CFOs moderate overinvestment tendencies, leading to more disciplined capital allocation, but their influence on cash holdings and forecast optimism is limited, likely due to organizational power dynamics and career constraints. Institutional factors further shape these dynamics — Bumiputera-dominated boards promote financial conservatism with higher cash reserves and forecast optimism but may limit female CFOs’ authority, while family firms exhibit reduced investment efficiency under overconfident leadership, reflecting a governance-control misalignment. These findings, robust to endogeneity concerns, highlight how leadership diversity and institutional structures interact to influence corporate financial outcomes. 2025 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/97765 10.1016/j.ribaf.2025.102981 Elsevier unknown |
| spellingShingle | Abdul Wahab, Effiezal How, Janice Ismail, Ismaanzira Overconfident Male CEOs and Corporate Outcomes: The Moderating Role of Female CFOs |
| title | Overconfident Male CEOs and Corporate Outcomes: The Moderating Role of Female CFOs |
| title_full | Overconfident Male CEOs and Corporate Outcomes: The Moderating Role of Female CFOs |
| title_fullStr | Overconfident Male CEOs and Corporate Outcomes: The Moderating Role of Female CFOs |
| title_full_unstemmed | Overconfident Male CEOs and Corporate Outcomes: The Moderating Role of Female CFOs |
| title_short | Overconfident Male CEOs and Corporate Outcomes: The Moderating Role of Female CFOs |
| title_sort | overconfident male ceos and corporate outcomes: the moderating role of female cfos |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/97765 |