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(Correspondent: Zhong Yiming) Recently, the paper titled “CEO Relative Age at School Entry and Corporate Risk-Taking” co-authored by Assistant Research Fellow Guo Junru, Professor He Jia (School of Finance, Nankai University), Associate Professor Liu Sibo (Hong Kong Baptist University), and Associate Professor Wang Yonglin (Lingnan University) has been published in Volume 176 of Journal of Banking & Finance, a leading international economics journal.

This paper investigates the effect of CEO relative age, an early-life measure defined as age relative to others in the same school cohort determined by the cutoff date policy at primary school entry, on corporate risk-taking. They find that firms with “relatively older” CEOs, i.e., those who were older than their classmates at school entry, compared with firms with “relatively younger” CEOs, have greater volatility in their profitability and stock returns, use debt financing more aggressively, engage in more diversifying and value-destroying acquisitions, and experience deteriorating performance. The results are robust to a battery of alternative specifications.

Established in 1977, Journal of Banking & Finance (JBF) is globally recognized as a top-tier journal in the financial subfield. It publishes cutting-edge theoretical and empirical research in banking and finance, aiming to facilitate communication among academia, research institutions, financial organizations, and regulatory decision-makers.