Abstract
The Great Chinese Famine is considered one ofthe most traumatic events recorded in humanhistory and has a long‐lasting influence on thesurvivors' behaviors. Previous studies have linkedthe CEOs' early‐life experiences to corporate decisionsand managerial behaviors, but does experienceaffect corporate governance? We investigatethe impact of the CEO's early‐life famine experienceon tunneling using a data set consisting of 11,573firm‐year observations from the Chinese manufacturingcompanies publishing A‐shares on the mainboard from 2006 to 2016. We find that companiesrun by CEOs who experienced the Great ChineseFamine (1959–1961) in their early life are less likelyto collude with controlling shareholders to expropriateminority shareholders than those who did notsuffer the hardships of famine. We further makemediation tests to confirm two channels: riskaversion and empathy for poverty. The overallfindings align with the view of imprinting theory:CEOs' experiences of adverse events in their earlylife have a lasting impact on their later‐lifebehaviors.
NETL
NSTL
Wiley