Relationship between CEO overconfidence, pay gap and external guarantee

Abstract

This paper attempts to disclose the intrinsic relationship between CEO overconfidence, pay gap and external guarantee. First, the CEO overconfidence was measured by four personal traits of the CEO, namely, gender, age, education level and tenure. Then, an empirical analysis was performed to disclose the impact of CEO overconfidence on the pay gap of senior executives and the decisions on external guarantee of a listed company. Moreover, the authors analyzed how this impact is regulated by corporate governance mechanism. The results show that the level of CEO overconfidence is negatively correlated with the pay gap of senior executives; the external guarantee of the company is greatly suppressed by CEO overconfidence.