Overconfidence, CEO Awards, and Corporate Tax Aggressiveness
Journal of Business Finance & Accounting
Published online on February 24, 2017
Abstract
Theory and prior research suggest that overconfidence leads managers to overestimate their own ability to generate returns, leading to riskier corporate policies. We use a novel dataset of media awards as an exogenous shock to overconfidence to test whether award‐winning CEOs adopt more aggressive corporate tax policies. Using propensity score matching and a difference‐in‐difference design, we find strong evidence that firms with an award‐winning CEO exhibit significantly greater tax aggressiveness following the award. Overall, our results suggest that CEO overconfidence has a meaningful impact on corporate tax policy.