IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/irvfin/v25y2025i1ne70004.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Risk‐averse or altruistic? Board chairs' early‐life experience and debt maturity

Author

Listed:
  • Yong Chen
  • Yun‐Ching Chang
  • Guan‐Ying Huang

Abstract

This study investigates the relationship between board chairs' early‐life experiences during the Great Chinese Famine and the debt maturity choices of Chinese listed firms from 2000 to 2017. The findings reveal that board chairs with famine experience demonstrate a stronger preference for long‐term debt usage. Moreover, these board chairs underestimate future corporate earnings, are less prone to overinvestment, adopt more hedging strategies, and ensure higher‐quality accounting information. The results are particularly pronounced in firms with lower asset redeployability, higher financial distress risk, the absence of political affiliations, non‐state ownership, lower market competition, and heightened economic policy uncertainty. These findings suggest that the observed behavior stems from a risk‐averse orientation rather than altruistic motivations among board chairs with famine experience.

Suggested Citation

  • Yong Chen & Yun‐Ching Chang & Guan‐Ying Huang, 2025. "Risk‐averse or altruistic? Board chairs' early‐life experience and debt maturity," International Review of Finance, International Review of Finance Ltd., vol. 25(1), March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:irvfin:v:25:y:2025:i:1:n:e70004
    DOI: 10.1111/irfi.70004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/irfi.70004
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/irfi.70004?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:irvfin:v:25:y:2025:i:1:n:e70004. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=1369-412X .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.