Research Idea: Business leaders and market uncertainty

Do overconfidence CEOs survive through COVID-19 Pandemic?

Recent research on overconfidence CEOs found that CEO overconfidence has significant impact on firms’ innovation and Mergers and Acquisition activities. For example, due to their psychological bias, such CEOs tend to underestimate the uncertainty and overestimate firm’s future prospects.

Understanding the benefit and cost of hiring overconfident CEOs has attracted a lot of interest from academic studies to general media reports. Further, the global economic crisis triggered by COVID-19 is different from past crises with respect to its cause, scope, and severity, which motivate studies into the determinants causing the responses of firms, especially managed by overconfident CEOs, to the COVID-19 crisis. There exists significant potential for further research in this area to contribute to our understandings of the consequence of COVID-19 crisis and whether the CEO’s personal characteristics play a role during such a difficult time.

If this area of research is on interest to you, you may consider undertaking an Honours project on this topic. Contact Dean Wilkie to have a discussion.