CEO centrality and stock price crash risk

We examine the effect of the CEO's network centrality on a firm's future stock price crash risk with a longitudinal dataset of S&P 1500 companies from 1999 to 2019. We find that firms with more central CEOs are less likely to show bad news hoarding behavior, leading to lower future stock price crash risk. Our results hold even after controlling for other CEO characteristics and the social connectedness of directors and are also robust to alternate measures. We further find that firms with better-connected CEOs have lower likelihood of using accounting manipulations with aggressive accruals and real earnings management, preventing the accumulation of bad news. Overall, our results support the notion that more connected CEOs may provide a governance role via reducing the stockpiling of bad news and mitigation of stock price crash risk. (C) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.