 CEO’s early-life war-experience and corporate philanthropic donation: Evidence from the Korean WarSanghak Choi and Hongmin Chun Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, 2025, vol. 46, issue C Abstract: This study investigates the influence of CEOs' early-life exposure to war on corporate philanthropic donations, focusing on the Korean War as a unique historical context. The findings reveal a significant positive relationship between CEOs' early-life war experiences and the magnitude of corporate donations, particularly among those aged six to 15 during the war and from regions with higher war severity. Robustness checks, including propensity score matching and regression discontinuity design, confirm the validity of these results. The research contributes to upper echelons and imprinting theories by demonstrating how formative traumatic experiences shape altruistic decision-making and corporate policies. Moreover, it identifies moderating factors such as financial constraints, Chaebol affiliation, and foreign ownership weaken this relationship by limiting CEOs' decision-making autonomy or resources. Keywords: CEO’s early-life experience; Corporate donations; Korean War; Upper echelons theory; Imprinting theory (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:beexfi:v:46:y:2025:i:c:s2214635025000425 DOI: 10.1016/j.jbef.2025.101061 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance is currently edited by Michael Dowling and Jürgen Huber More articles in Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance from Elsevier |
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