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Executive traits and stock price crash risk: Evidence from China’s Growth Enterprise Market
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Yuki Gong 
, Ruixue Sun, Yanmiao Cai, Li Willa
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Abstract
This study examines how executive characteristics, including gender, educational attainment, and overseas experience, affect stock price crash risk among firms listed on China’s Growth Enterprise Market (GEM) from 2009 to 2023. The results reveal that firms led by male executives are associated with significantly higher crash risk, whereas executives with higher education levels are linked to lower crash risk. Interestingly, contrary to prevailing expectations, overseas experience is positively related to crash risk. These relationships remain robust after controlling for firm-specific characteristics and addressing potential endogeneity using a Heckman two-stage regression approach. This study contributes to the behavioral corporate governance literature by providing novel evidence on the influence of executive demographic traits on crash risk in an emerging market setting. By combining a large-scale dataset with rigorous endogeneity controls, it offers fresh insights into executive governance mechanisms under conditions of high volatility and information asymmetry.
Keywords: Executive Characteristics, Stock Price Crash Risk, Behavioral Corporate Governance, Emerging Markets, Information Transparency
Authors’ individual contribution: Conceptualization — Y.G. and R.S.; Methodology — Y.G. and R.S.; Software — R.S.; Validation — Y.C.; Formal Analysis — Y.G. and R.S.; Investigation — Y.C.; Resources — W.L.; Data Curation — R.S. and Y.C.; Writing — Original Draft — Y.G., R.S., Y.C., and W.L.; Writing — Review & Editing — Y.G., R.S., Y.C., and W.L.; Visualization — R.S.; Supervision — Y.G.; Project Administration — Y.G.; Funding Acquisition — W.L.
Declaration of conflicting interests: The Authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.
JEL Classification: G15, G32, G34, J24, M14
Received: 08.06.2025
Revised: 03.08.2025; 14.08.2025
Accepted: 25.08.2025
Published online: 27.08.2025
How to cite this paper: Gong, Y., Sun, R., Cai, Y., & Li, W. (2025). Executive traits and stock price crash risk: Evidence from China’s Growth Enterprise Market. Corporate Ownership & Control, 22(3), 47–61. https://doi.org/10.22495/cocv22i3art4
