Manager Personal Traits and Financial Decisions
type: CreativeWork
description: The ultimate goal for economic agents who are in managing roles is to maximize their shareholders’ values. As managers, they are expected to make value-enhancing decisions based on their professional knowledge and skills. However, economic agents’ decisions are heavily influenced by their preferences, which are often related to their personal characteristics. Therefore, studying manager personal traits could significantly extend our understanding about their decisions. In my dissertation, I try to understand how two specific aspects of managers’ personal traits – personal social networks and political ideology – affect their professional financial decisions and the associated benefits and costs to their shareholders. My dissertation has two major parts and three essays. In the first part, I study the impacts of managers’ personal networks established through their professional and social experiences. In the first essay, I explore the information channel established through networks between firms’ CFOs and bankers. I show that this information channel can help firms with such connected CFOs to break the information asymmetry barriers and eventually achieve a less costly capital structure. In the second essay, I study how friendliness among connected top executives and directors can help their firms alleviate the costs associated with complying with stricter regulations (i.e., the stricter requirements on board independence in the post Sarbanes-Oxley Act era). In the second part, I test how managers’ political ideology affects their professional decisions. Particularly, I investigate whether mutual fund managers are more likely to invest in firms running by executives with similar political ideologies. I also explore whether this bias among mutual fund managers are beneficial or detrimental to their fund shareholders. The first essay is titled as Cash and Connections: The Importance of CFO Networks. In this paper, I present evidence that firms with Chief Financial Off…
abstract: The ultimate goal for economic agents who are in managing roles is to maximize their shareholders’ values. As managers, they are expected to make value-enhancing decisions based on their professional knowledge and skills. However, economic agents’ decisions are heavily influenced by their preferences, which are often related to their personal characteristics. Therefore, studying manager personal traits could significantly extend our understanding about their decisions. In my dissertation, I try to understand how two specific aspects of managers’ personal traits – personal social networks and political ideology – affect their professional financial decisions and the associated benefits and costs to their shareholders. My dissertation has two major parts and three essays. In the first part, I study the impacts of managers’ personal networks established through their professional and social experiences. In the first essay, I explore the information channel established through networks between firms’ CFOs and bankers. I show that this information channel can help firms with such connected CFOs to break the information asymmetry barriers and eventually achieve a less costly capital structure. In the second essay, I study how friendliness among connected top executives and directors can help their firms alleviate the costs associated with complying with stricter regulations (i.e., the stricter requirements on board independence in the post Sarbanes-Oxley Act era). In the second part, I test how managers’ political ideology affects their professional decisions. Particularly, I investigate whether mutual fund managers are more likely to invest in firms running by executives with similar political ideologies. I also explore whether this bias among mutual fund managers are beneficial or detrimental to their fund shareholders. The first essay is titled as Cash and Connections: The Importance of CFO Networks. In this paper, I present evidence that firms with Chief Financial Off…
author: Xi, Yaoyi
language: en
keywords: Finance, Board Structure, Cash Holding, Manager Personal Traits, Mutual Fund Investment, Political Ideology, Social Networks
date published: 2018-01-01
date modified: 2026-07-24T02:45:31Z
provider: University of Kansas
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Kansas

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: https://hdl.handle.net/1808/37290