Manuscript Type: EmpiricalResearch Question/Issue: This study seeks to understand how the characteristics of executive directors affect the market performance of US banks. To explore the expected performance effects linked to executive characteristics, we measure any changes in the market valuation of banks linked to announcements of executive appointments. Research Findings/Insights: Our study has two important findings. First, we show that age, education, and the prior work experience of executives create shareholder wealth while gender is not linked to measurable value effects. Second, these wealth effects are moderated by the level of influence of incoming executives, with their magnitude diminished under independent boards and higher if the incoming executive is also appointed as CEO. Our results are robust to the treatment of selection bias. Theoretical/Academic Implications: By illustrating the wealth effects linked to executive appointments, our study contributes to the current debate on whether and how individual executives matter for firm performance and behavior. The findings also shed light on the value of human capital in the banking industry. Practitioner/Policy Implications: This study offers important insights to policymakers charged with ensuring the competency of executives in banking. Our findings advocate policies that mandate banks to appoint highly qualified executives with relevant banking experience.

We exploit variation in the cultural heritage across U.S. CEOs who are the children or grandchildren of immigrants to demonstrate that the cultural origins of CEOs matter for corporate outcomes. Following shocks to industry competition, firms led by CEOs who are second-or third-generation immigrants are associated with a 6.2% higher profitability compared with the average firm. This effect weakens over successive immigrant generations and cannot be detected for top executives apart from the CEO. Additional analysis attributes this effect to various cultural values that prevail in a CEO's ancestral country of origin. (JEL G30, M14, Z1) We are grateful to Andrew Karolyi (the editor) and an anonymous referee for very helpful comments and suggestions.

Using comprehensive corporate and retail loan data, we show that the corporate culture of banks explains their risk-taking behaviour. Banks whose corporate culture leans towards aggressive competition are associated with riskier lending practices: higher approval rate, lower borrower quality, and fewer covenant requirements. Consequently, these banks incur larger loan losses and make greater contributions to systemic risk. The opposite behaviour is observed among banks whose culture emphasizes control and safety. Our findings cannot be explained by heterogeneity in a bank's business model, CEO compensation incentives or CEO characteristics. We use an exogenous shock to the US banking system during the 1998 Russian default crisis to support a causal inference.We are grateful to Marc Goergen (Associate Editor) and three anonymous referees for very helpful comments and suggestions. We also thank . Harvard IV-4 Psychosocial Dictionary. For instance, words like 'fast, expand, performance and win' are associated with compete culture, words like 'envision, freedom and venture' are associated with create culture, words like 'cooperate, human and partner' are associated with collaborate culture and words like 'monitor, competence and long-term' are associated with control culture.C 2019 British Academy of Management.

We study regulatory enforcement actions issued against US banks to show that both board monitoring and advising are effective in preventing misconduct by banks. While better monitoring by boards prevents all categories of misconduct, better advising prevents misconduct of a technical nature. Board monitoring increases the likelihood that misconduct is detected, increases the penalties imposed on the CEO and alleviates shareholder wealth losses following the detection of misconduct by regulators. Our paper offers novel insights on how to structure bank boards to prevent bank misconduct. JEL Classifications: G20, G30, K20

We show that lenders charge higher interest rates for mortgages on properties exposed to a greater risk of sea level rise (SLR). This SLR premium is not evident in short-term loans and is not related to borrowers’ short-term realized default or creditworthiness. Further, the SLR premium is smaller when the consequences of climate change are less salient and in areas with more climate change deniers. Overall, our results suggest that mortgage lenders view the risk of SLR as a long-term risk and that attention and beliefs are potential barriers through which SLR risk is priced in residential mortgage markets.