Corporate cash holdings and over-investment – from perspective of CEO gender

Abstract

In this paper I empirically investigate how CEO gender affects corporate cash holdings and the over-investment of free cash flow among Taiwan listed firms Thereby I utilize a sample of 179 listed firms with female CEOs and a sample of 2149 listed firms with male CEOs during 2012 to 2014 The empirical results show that female CEOs are associated with a higher level of corporate cash holdings Compared with male CEOs female CEOs are more concerned with the precautionary motive of cash while they care less about the opportunity cost of cash Besides I find that female CEOs moderate the over-investment problem of free cash flow again indicating that they are more conservative than male CEOs

Date of Award	2016 Jun 14
Original language	English
Supervisor	Hsuan-Chu Lin (Supervisor)