We examine the impact of employee-related Corporate Social Responsibility (ER-CSR) on pay disparity between top management and the average worker. Firms with higher ER-CSR ratings have a lower pay disparity and the effect is greatest when executives are paid the most. ER-CSR is associated with a lower ratio of top management's cash and long-term incentive compensation, relative to the average employee's pay. We find that the negative relation is driven by socially responsible firms paying their average employees more. Finally, we document that CSR activities related to employee relations and diversity are those leading to a significant pay disparity reduction.

This study establishes a relation between corporate culture and debt maturity choice. Specifically, superior corporate culture is associated with the choice of shorter-term debt, supporting the notion that superior culture reduces managerial agency problems resulting in managers being more receptive to external monitoring through the choice of shorter-term debt. The culture subcomponents of integrity, teamwork, and innovation are found to have a meaningful influence on the debt maturity structure choice. The relation between culture and debt maturity is more pronounced in firms with higher managerial stock ownership and those that are financially constrained, but is weakened in firms with a greater CEO sensitivity to stock prices. Additionally, firms with superior culture are shown to have higher long-term credit ratings. These findings contribute at the confluence of corporate culture and debt financing literatures. A battery of robustness tests, including addressing endogeneity concerns, validate the findings.

Gender diversity in the C-suite and the boardroom have taken on greater importance in recent years. We establish a gender-based behavioral dimension to corporate debt maturity choice. Female executives choose a significantly shorter debt maturity structure compared to their male counterparts. However, their influence on debt maturity is inversely related to the proportion of their incentive compensation. Additionally, we find a substitution effect that moderates the relationship between executive gender and debt maturity structure as board gender diversity increases. Further, we find that firms led by females benefit from higher corporate credit ratings thus showing that the greater ethical sensitivities of female top executives compensate for the refinancing risk commonly associated with shorter-term debt. Transitions from male-to-female executive(s) result in shortening of debt maturity over the post-transition period. Our results survive a battery of robustness tests, including endogeneity, and contribute at the confluence of gender-based governance and corporate financial decision-making literatures.