Sudip Datta and Francesca Roscano accepted for publication in Journal of Financial Stability
Mike Ilitch School of Business professors of finance Sudip Datta and Francesca Toscano have been accepted for publication in Journal of Financial Stability, which seeks to publish rigorous theoretical and empirical work on macro and micro economics and financial analysis.
The article, titled “Top Executive Gender, Corporate Culture, and the Value of Corporate Cash Holdings,” was co-authored by Trang Doan, a former Mike Ilitch School of Business doctoral student and current assistant professor of finance at Eastern Illinois University.
Abstract
We document that firms run by female executives are associated with a significantly greater value for their cash holdings. In these firms, the marginal value of one dollar is $1.39, while the comparable value is $0.90 for male managed firms. Further, the marginal value of cash holdings for firms run by female CEOs (CFOs) is $1.56 ($1.47) compared to $0.94 ($0.91) for firms with male CEOs (CFOs). The significant difference in the value of cash holdings may be attributed to the gender-based female executives’ traits that permeate a myriad of corporate decisions with superior outcomes that cumulatively manifest in the market assigning a higher value to cash holdings by these firms. The effect is more pronounced in firms with any of the following characteristics: financially unconstrained, cash distributing, weak governance, low institutional investor monitoring, and low audit quality. Adding another new dimension to the literature, we show that corporate culture is a potential determinant of the value of cash holdings. Specifically, we document that female led firms are associated with a more salubrious corporate environment manifesting in a greater value assigned to corporate cash holdings. Our results are robust to a battery of robustness tests.
