부산대학교 도서관

Recent research makes contradictory claims regarding why female CEOs eschew riskier policies. Benchmarking risk aversion by how much cash is accumulated and managed, we find strong evidence of greater female risk aversion above the glass ceiling. Using propensity-score matching and difference-in-differences around CEO transitions to account for possible endogeneity, we find that female CEOs hold more cash, reverse cash deficits faster, and are more likely to use excess cash to increase dividends, but not investment. We also find that, in the presence of high cash holdings, female CEOs are able to generate significantly higher Return on Assets (ROA) suggesting that risk aversion on the part of female CEOs does not hurt financial performance but rather enhances it.