We examine the association between CEO birthplace proximity and financial misconduct. We find that CEOs managing firms near their birthplaces (home CEOs) are associated with less financial misconduct compared to other CEOs. This association is not attributable to differences in corporate governance. The relationship strengthens in areas with a strong local investment presence and greater religious commitment as well as among CEOs with longer tenures in their home state. Our findings are robust to addressing potential selection and omitted variable biases as well as to conducting multiple robustness tests, including analyses of involuntary CEO changes and headquarters relocations. We also find a similar association for CFOs, with firms employing home CFOs exhibiting less financial misconduct.

There is a curvilinear relation between credit ratings and acquisitions. Non-investment grade firms make more acquisitions as their ratings improve, consistent with the relaxation of financial constraints. However, this pattern reverses for investment grade firms, supporting the view that such firms want to preserve their rating and are concerned about acquisition-related downgrades. Abnormal returns first decrease and then increase as ratings improve. In support of these findings, acquisitions have a negative impact on future ratings only for highly-rated firms. These results indicate that the level of a firm's credit rating has a significant impact on the acquisition process.

We examine the relation between home CEOs and corporate social responsibility (CSR). Our analysis shows home CEOs are associated with higher CSR engagement and increased firm value. These firms exhibit higher asset turnover, lower cost of equity , improved productivity, sales, and profit margins. Home CEOs focus more on community, environmental, and employee-related CSR, and are linked to reduced carbon emissions . This relationship is stronger in firms with higher local business concentration and investor monitoring. Firms led by home CEOs earn higher returns during recent crises. Our results suggest the value increase is not primarily due to agency effects and remain robust to endogeneity concerns. The study indicates a CEO’s community connection may influence CSR effectiveness, suggesting that mere CSR engagement may not suffice to boost trust and value. These results highlight the potential importance of local ties in corporate leadership and CSR strategy.

In line with the view that politics can complicate M&A deals, we find that firms contributing to political action committees or involved in lobbying are less likely to be acquired and their takeover process is lengthier. As we empirically show, this can be explained by the fact that politicians have motives to interfere with the takeover process due to career concerns, in terms of getting re-elected and raising funds for future campaigns. We also document that politically connected target firms command higher takeover premiums from bidders lacking political expertise, consistent with the notion that the market regards target firms' connections, not easily replicable by bidders, as means to enhance growth opportunities of the merged firm.