Department of Quantitative Methods, University of Loyola Andalucía, Sevilla, Spain.
Department of Economics and Business, University of Almería, Almería, Spain.
PLoS One. 2019 Jul 18;14(7):e0218853. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0218853. eCollection 2019.
Executives act based on their experiences, values, personality and personal interpretation of the situations which they face in their companies. Investigations in the field of Behavioral Corporate Finance have determined that there are some relations between CEOs' personal traits and financial decisions of large companies, but these results are based on indirect personal trait measurements and on public companies. To see whether such relations also exist between CEOs' personal traits and the financial structure of large private companies, we used psychometric tests to measure their level of optimism, risk attitude and affect heuristic, collected financial data for a period of fourteen years, and considered the economic situation of the country as a key factor in these relations. This paper reports the relationship of executives' personal traits with the financial structure of large Spanish companies for the period 2001-2014. We observed that executives' high optimism (and risk aversion attitude) is positively (negatively) related to long-term debt, whilst positive affect is directly associated to the financial leverage and short-term debt. This paper also reports a change of relations when taking into account the country's economic situation. In effect, by considering this new variable, executives' risk aversion is seen to be associated to financial leverage and short-term debt, whilst CEOs' positive affect is linked to long-term debt. These relations are strongly moderated and they become statistically significant in a contracting economic period. In conclusion, the links between CEOs' personal traits and financial structure of large private Spanish companies make sense when the effect of the economic situation is taken into account. Furthermore, the awareness of these links helps to understand the financial decisions taken within large Spanish companies.
高管根据他们的经验、价值观、个性以及对公司所面临情况的个人理解来做出决策。行为公司财务领域的研究已经确定，首席执行官的个人特质与大公司的财务决策之间存在一些关系，但这些结果基于间接的个人特质衡量和上市公司。为了研究首席执行官的个人特质与大私人公司的财务结构之间是否也存在这种关系，我们使用心理测试来衡量他们的乐观程度、风险态度和情感启发式，收集了长达十四年的财务数据，并将国家的经济状况视为这些关系中的关键因素。本文报告了 2001-2014 年期间西班牙大公司高管个人特质与财务结构之间的关系。我们观察到，高管的高度乐观（和风险规避态度）与长期债务呈正相关（负相关），而积极的情绪则与财务杠杆和短期债务直接相关。本文还报告了在考虑到国家经济形势时关系的变化。实际上，通过考虑这个新变量，我们发现高管的风险规避与财务杠杆和短期债务有关，而首席执行官的积极情绪与长期债务有关。这些关系受到强烈调节，并且在经济收缩时期变得具有统计学意义。总之，当考虑到经济形势的影响时，西班牙大私人公司首席执行官的个人特质与财务结构之间的联系才有意义。此外，对这些联系的认识有助于理解西班牙大公司内部的财务决策。
