Outside board chairs are more likely in firms that are smaller, have greater stock volatility and research and development intensity, and have a lower proportion of inside directors and less institutional ownership; they are also more likely when chief executive officers have shorter tenure and lower ownership. We also find that the existence of an outside chair is associated with geographical and industry norms. An outside chair is positively associated with firm performance, a finding robust to various estimation methods, including event study and multivariate analyses incorporating controls for endogeneity, as well as market and accounting measures of performance. We note, however, that the relationship between outside chair and firm performance varies with firm characteristics.

Purpose: Many scholars and practitioners lament female pay gaps and the ethical issues they pose; yet several studies provide supporting evidence showing that the female CEOs earn more than men. However, other studies find an insignificant difference between male and female CEO pay. 10; The purpose of this study is to re-investigate this question to uncover the root of the divergent findings and thereby clarify our understanding of this important issue of CEOs’ gender pay gaps.Design/methodology/approach: Evidence suggests the CEO position is at times a rare instance where typical pay gaps for female workers reverse such that these executives earn pay premiums. Recently, Guptaet al.(2018) called findings for female CEO pay premiums into question, failing to find differences despite using data similar to prior studies. The authors investigated the discrepant findings, identifying and showing that the use of an analytical approach to account for unobserved differences (i.e. fixed effects) are inappropriate for the data structure drives’ divergent findings. The authors also find that results are affected by the industries and time-frames used in the analyses.Findings: The authors find that female CEOs outearn their male counterparts. However, the authors also show that the significance of results is affected by the industries and time-frames used in the analyses.Originality/value: It is an original work that reexamines a somewhat controversial issue on the gender differences in CEO pay.

Purpose: There is some evidence that firms appoint internal candidates to exploit their unique firm specific knowledge and that the type of appointments may have signaling value to the market. However, these studies are limited to chief executive officer appointments whereas other top executives could also play an important role in corporate decision making. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the chief financial officer (CFO) appointments and firm’s debt-equity choice.Design/methodology/approach: The authors employ a multiple regression framework. To control for potential endogeneity, the authors use an instrumental variable approach with both two-stage least squares and generalized method of moments estimators.Findings: The authors find that firms with internal CFO hires issue more equity than firms that hire from the external labor market. The authors also find that internal CFOs significantly reduce information asymmetry (IA), which may lower market risk and the cost of financing through equity issues. Furthermore, consistent with the value maximizing role of reduced IA the authors find that this effect is concentrated in value firms. In firms with higher IA this preference for equity by the internal CFO may be weaker as even internal CFOs will prefer debt financing for its disciplining role and to reduce IA. A subsample analysis with growth firms shows this diminishing impact on the financing choice of an internal CFO.Originality/value: This study provides important information about the influence the CFO has on a firm’s capital structure decisions.