Top Management Team Finance Education: Implications for Stock Price Synchronicity and Crash Risk

Xuan‐Qi Su

Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, 2026, vol. 53, issue 1, 207-242

Abstract: Based on a dataset of listed Taiwanese firms spanning 2006–2023, this study documents a robust negative association between the presence of top management team members with finance‐related education (MFE) and both stock price synchronicity and crash risk. These effects persist after robustness checks and controls for endogeneity. Furthermore, these negative associations are particularly pronounced in firms led by finance‐educated executives with undergraduate degrees or elite educational credentials, and in settings with weak external monitoring—specifically, low analyst coverage, sparse media exposure, and minimal institutional ownership. Mediation analysis reveals that high‐MFE firms exhibit superior information disclosure quality. The overall findings support the “dual substantive and symbolic functions” hypothesis: Firms with a higher proportion of finance‐educated executives—whether driven by substantive intent or symbolic signaling—more effectively direct investor attention toward firm‐specific information, thereby improving disclosure quality and reducing stock price synchronicity and crash risk. This study contributes to the literature by identifying MFE’s attention‐directing role and its broader implications for information efficiency in capital markets.

Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/jbfa.70015

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jbfnac:v:53:y:2026:i:1:p:207-242

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0306-686X

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Finance & Accounting is currently edited by P. F. Pope, A. W. Stark and M. Walker

More articles in Journal of Business Finance & Accounting from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().