Financing and investment decisions of firms by overconfident and optimistic managers / Decisões de financiamento e de investimento das empresas sob a ótica de gestores otimistas e excessivamente confiantes

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2005

RESUMO

This research empirically investigates the possible impacts of cognitively biased managers on firmsfinancing and investment decisions. Specifically, two cognitive biases that are widely recorded in the behavioral and psychological literature are considered: optimism and overconfidence. The testable hypotheses are derived from a growing body of theories that focus on the implications of biased managers for firms. Although optimism and overconfidence tend to appear together, it is possible to treat them separately for analytical purposes. Generically, optimism is usually modeled as an overstatement of the probability of occurrence of favorable events and overconfidence is reflected in the understatement of the volatility or of the noise of processes that involve uncertainty. It is argued that one central prediction emerges from the set of models considered, namely, that companies managed by optimistic and/or overconfident individuals are more inclined towards debt financing, ceteris paribus. Some models that focus on the bias of optimism alone suggest, in addition, that these companies are more prone to establishing an ordering of preferences for alternative sources of financing known as pecking order. When it comes to the impact of these biases on the firms market value and on its investment decisions the theoretical results are more ambiguous. The study offers two main contributions. Firstly, it pioneers in testing the above mentioned predictions. Secondly, it proposes a novel strategy for identifying these biases among managers. Specifically, solid empirical evidence supported by diverse theoretical arguments suggests that people who run their own business (entrepreneurs) are particularly prone to showing overconfidence and optimism in their judgments. Alternatively, these biases were identified based on the amount of firms stock owned by its manager. The available sample comprises 153 Brazilians firms observed from years 1998 to 2003. Different methods were applied for estimating the parameters of the empirical models, emphasizing a procedure based on the Generalized Method of Moments and known as System GMM, aiming at controlling endogeneity problems related to omitted variables, measurement errors and the likely simultaneous determination of some variables. The empirical evidence obtained does not favor the pecking order hypothesis. It is also not possible to distinguish any systematic impact of the proxies for managerial optimism/overconfidence on indicators of firms market value or of its general level of investments. A quite significant result emerges from the empirical analysis, nevertheless: firms managed by individuals that were classified as optimists/overconfident reveal themselves, after intervening factors have been isolated, to be substantially more financially leveraged. This evidence is compatible with the central prediction of the set of theories considered and is robust to variations of the estimation method, specification of the empirical model and to differing operational definitions for the cognitive biases of interest. The economic significance allied to the statistical significance of the observed impact suggests that managerial optimism and overconfidence can indeed play a role in corporate decision making and, specifically, they may be important determinants of firmscapital structure.

ASSUNTO(S)

excesso de confiança otimismo gerencial capital structure managerial optimism behavioral finance estrutura de capital finanças corporativas overconfidence corporate finance finanças comportamentais

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