The literature posits that some CEO overconfidence benefits shareholders, though high levels may not. We argue that adequate controls and independent viewpoints provided by an independent board mitigates the costs of CEO overconfidence. We use the concurrent passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and changes to the NYSE/NASDAQ listing rules (collectively, SOX) as natural experiments, to examine whether board independence improves decision making by overconfident CEOs. The results are strongly supportive: after SOX, overconfident CEOs reduce investment and risk exposure, increase dividends, improve postacquisition performance, and have better operating performance and market value. Importantly, these changes are absent for overconfident-CEO firms that were compliant prior to SOX.

We provide evidence of a link between firm dividend policy and stock market liquidity. In the cross section, owners of less (more) liquid common stock are more (less) likely to receive cash dividends. Predictions of the proportion of dividend payers based on 1963–1977 cross-sectional estimates account for most of the declining propensity of firms to pay dividends as documented by Fama and French (2001). Furthermore, historic liquidity is an important determinant of dividend initiations and omissions. Finally, we show that sensitivity of firm value to aggregate liquidity declines after dividend initiations, suggesting that investors view stock market liquidity and dividends as substitutes.

Overconfident CEOs/senior executives tend to have excessively positive views of their own skills and their company’s future performance. We hypothesize that overconfident managers are more likely to engage in reckless or intentional actions/disclosures that give rise to securities class actions (SCAs). Empirical evidence is supportive: Overconfident CEOs/senior executives increase SCA likelihood, though litigation risk is ameliorated through improved governance, such as following the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002. Post-SCA, companies are less likely to hire an overconfident CEO. Following an SCA, overconfident CEOs appear to moderate behavior and to reduce their litigation risk.

We study the impacts of country-level information asymmetry, investors' home-country bias, effectiveness of contract enforcement mechanisms, and accessibility of legal recourse on IPO underpricing in 36 countries around the globe. We find evidence consistent with all four of our hypotheses. First, we find a positive and significant effect of country-level information asymmetry on IPO underpricing. Second, our empirical evidence is consistent with the agency-cost-based explanation of IPO underpricing. We find that lower cost to entice the block holders, measured by domestic investors' home-country bias, reduces IPO underpricing. Third, we find that effective contract enforcement mechanisms help to reduce IPO underpricing. Finally, we find a positive relation between the accessibility of legal recourse and IPO underpricing.

We propose and test the hypothesis that overconfident-CEOs, with upwardly-biased estimates of own firm-value, are more predisposed to repurchasing stock. An implication is that the stock-market, recognizing overconfident-CEO behavior, will react less positively to repurchase announcements. The hypothesis is strongly supported: Overconfident managers repurchase stock at lower levels of cash holdings, and respond more to stock-price declines. Entrenchment exacerbates this behavior. Interestingly, institutional investors appear to encourage repurchases, perhaps to curb excessive investment. Overconfident-CEOs are also more likely to substitute repurchases for dividends or capital expenditure. Consistent with our hypothesis, the stock-market reaction to these share repurchase announcements is less positive.

Are overconfident executives more likely to be promoted to CEOs? Using an option-based overconfidence measure, we show that firms with overconfident executives tend to hire internally. Further, when firms hire internally, they are more likely to pick a more confident candidate. The results suggest that governance and board inattention can play a role, with overconfident executives being more likely to become CEOs in firms with entrenched and busy boards, suggesting that such boards might confuse luck-with-skill following the confident executives’ tendencies towards greater risk-taking.