Overconfidence and Early-life Experiences: The Impact of Managerial Traits on Corporate Financial Policies

We are indebted to Brian Hall, David Yermack and John Graham for providing us with the data. We thank Malcolm Baker, Rudi Fahlenbrach, Michael Faulkender, Murray Frank, Dirk Hackbarth, Dirk Jenter, Jeremy Stein, Ilya Strebulaev, Avanidhar Subrahmanyam, Jeffrey Wurgler and seminar participants at the Berkeley, Calgary, Columbia, Helsinki School of Economics, Insead, MIT, Rotterdam, Stanford, UCLA, USC, Wharton (Applied Economics), Zurich and at the AEA, AFA, FEA, Frontiers in Finance (Banff), IZA Behavioral Economics of Organizations, and Olin Corporate Governance conferences for helpful comments. Nishanth Rajan provided excellent research assistance. Ulrike Malmendier would like to thank the Coleman Fung Risk Management Research Center for financial support. An earlier version of this paper was titled "Corporate Financial Policies With Overconfident Managers." The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

• data appendix

• January 12, 2010