Florian Eugster

This paper examines the effect of managers' personality trait of extraversion on the voluntary disclosure of their firms. Our results from analyzing archival data from Sweden show that the extraversion scores of CEOs and CFOs obtained from psychological tests are positively associated with the voluntary disclosure scores of their firms. The effect of manager extraversion on disclosure is moreover stronger when managerial discretion or managerial job demands are higher. We also find that extraversion affects managers' disclosure styles during earnings conference calls.

In this paper, we examine whether business school education increases students’ stock market participation. We use unique stock ownership data of students from a business school in Sweden. We find a significant increase in stock ownership during and after their studies at the school compared to before entering the school. The marginal effects are 3.8% for the first two years of the core curriculum, 4.4% for the specialisation year, and 4.3% for the three years following graduation. The positive effect of business education on stock market participation is mainly driven by students interested in accounting or finance subjects, and the effect is more pronounced for females than for male students.

Does earnings management, even though legal, hinder investor trust in reported earnings? Or do investors regard earnings management as a way for firms to convey private information, or simply as a neutral feature of financial reporting? We find that past abstinence from earnings management increases investor responses to future earnings surprises. Importantly, this effect occurs in industries where investor trust has recently been violated, and where managers would in the past have had incentives and opportunities to misrepresent earnings. Overall, investors seem to interpret the extent to which management resists temptations for misreporting as a “litmus test” of trustworthiness.