Top executive gender, corporate culture, and the value of corporate cash holdings

Abstract

We document that firms run by female executives are associated with a significantly greater value for their cash holdings. In these firms, the marginal value of one dollar is $1.39, while the comparable value is $0.90 for male managed firms. Further, the marginal value of cash holdings for firms run by female CEOs (CFOs) is $1.56 ($1.47) compared to $0.94 ($0.91) for firms with male CEOs (CFOs). The significant difference in the value of cash holdings may be attributed to the gender-based female executives’ traits that permeate a myriad of corporate decisions with superior outcomes that cumulatively manifest in the market assigning a higher value to cash holdings by these firms. The effect is more pronounced in firms with any of the following characteristics: financially unconstrained, cash distributing, weak governance, low institutional investors’ monitoring, and low audit quality. Adding another new dimension to the literature, we show that corporate culture is a potential determinant of the value of cash holdings. Specifically, we document that female led firms are associated with a more salubrious corporate environment manifesting in a greater value assigned to corporate cash holdings. Our results are robust to a battery of robustness tests.