In this paper, we test the hypothesis that CEO narcissism influences firms’ hedging behaviour. Our empirical evidence, based on hand‐collected data on derivative positions in the U.S. oil and gas industry, suggests that firms with a narcissistic CEO hedge more selectively. Furthermore, we find that these firms reduce selective hedging comparatively more following a sharp price collapse that sent the industry into a state of distress. This result is in line with the ‘narcissistic paradox’: While scoring high on self‐esteem and grandiosity in the normal case, such individuals are also inherently fragile and liable to crumble when faced with adversity.

Using a unique dataset of 50 listed companies that meet the majority of the OECD requirements for social impact investments, we construct a social impact finance stock index and investigate how investing in social impact firms can contribute to portfolio risk-return performance. We build portfolios with three different methodologies (naïve, Markowitz mean-variance optimization, GARCH-copula model), and we study the performance in terms of returns, Sharpe ratio, utility, and forecast premium based on a constant relative risk aversion function for investors with different levels of risk aversion. Consistent with the idea that social impact investment can improve portfolio risk-return performance, the results of our macro asset allocation analysis show the importance of a large fraction of investor portfolios’ stake committed to social impact investments.

This paper investigates the interplay between gender, entrepreneurial ecosystem domains, and network-building behaviors of startuppers. Leveraging data from the PSED (Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics), we focus on how women navigate the entrepreneurial landscape. Our research design employs a novel approach to analyze both ecosystem domains and the micro-networks of entrepreneurs using Social Network Analysis (SNA). The results reveal key distinctions between male and female network-building behaviors. Women tend to build networks with a higher concentration of relatives, particularly spouses. This network structure, while smaller, fosters greater gender diversity within the network, potentially leading to new business opportunities. Furthermore, we find that gender significantly influences access to specific ecosystem resources. Female entrepreneurs exhibit lower access to informal financial capital and support from professionals. However, a more gender diversity appears to mitigate this disadvantage by facilitating access to informal financial capital and support from owners. Our experiment on ecosystem measurement identifies prevailing bi-directional relationships between most domain variables, highlighting the interconnected nature of the ecosystem. Within the micro-networks, the strength of ties among owners emerges as the most influential factor impacting various ecosystem domains. Additionally, the openness of an entrepreneur’s network plays a critical role in enhancing expected market innovation and fostering a focus on broader market targets beyond the local marketplace. This study contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence on how gender shapes network-building behaviors, highlighting the importance of gender diversity within networks and suggesting potential strategies to bridge the gender gap in entrepreneurship.

The resource-based view, signaling, and behavioral perspectives focus on different theoretical mechanisms through which human capital and the behavioral characteristics of nascent entrepreneurs, in combination with insider and outsider financing, may influence the emergence of new ventures. This work tests the relative explanatory power of these different theoretical perspectives. We estimate a mediation model to disentangle the direct effect of nascent entrepreneur personal characteristics on new firm creation from their indirect effects, mediated by the amount of insider financing committed to new ventures and access to greater outsider financing. Our empirical results are based on data from the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics (PSED II) and improve our understanding of the drivers of new firm creation and their underlying mechanisms. Our findings support the resource-based view and the behavioral perspective in our sample of nascent entrepreneurs, but do not provide evidence of the signaling perspective.