Presenter: Mads Markvart Kjær, AU

Title: The hedging ability of the US dollar and currency risk premia

Abstract: We document that the US dollar's ability to hedge international stock risk is time-varying and contains significant information about currency risk premia. This predictability increases with the currency's stock beta and determines whether the risk price of international stock exposure is positive or negative: it is positive after months with a positive correlation between international stocks and the dollar, and negative after months with a negative correlation. These findings explain why previous literature has found currency risk premia to be unrelated to stock markets.

Presenter: Tom Aabo, AU

Title: Only attractive women are welcome: Board bias and CEO selection

Abstract: CEOs matter and beauty matters. Based on social identity theory, we argue that women and men are likely to be held to different beauty standards by male-dominated boards of directors when these boards select candidates for the CEO position. Our empirical results support our arguments. Specifically, we investigate 959 CEO turnovers in non-financial S&P 1500 firms in the period from 2008 to 2022. In line with our expectations, we find that newly appointed female CEOs are significantly more attractive than their male peers. We find no indication for an economic rationale for such particular preference for beauty in the case of female candidates. Thus, when investors are informed of the new CEO, they value CEO beauty equally across the two genders. The discrimination by the boards of directors seems to be related to women’s minority status rather than the sexualization of women although we cannot rule out that both coincide. Thus, we find that non-white candidates for the CEO position (i.e., another minority) are also discriminated against in the realm of beauty. Our findings are robust and economically significant, and they are important in understanding the avenues through which women face (beauty) discrimination in the upper echelons.

Organizers: Stefan Hirth and Anders Merrild Posselt