Investors Trust and the Gender of Senior Executives: An empirical study of investors trust and whether it is dependent on the gender of the senior executives of a company

Abstract

This study examines whether investors’ trust in senior executives is dependent on the gender of these, by investigating the relationship between the gender of the CEO/CFO and investors perceived risk of investing in the company. To make the result more robust, we control for factors that are generally known to influence the size of the bid-ask spread, such as size, trading volume, sector and market-to-book ratio, as well as for personal characteristics. We do not find evidence to support our hypothesis, that investors perceive the risk of investing to be lower in a firm with either a female CEO or CFO. Hence, our finding indicates that investors do not exhibit greater trust in female senior executives.