Taken With a Grain of Salt: Earnings Forecasts From Narcissistic CEOs

Adam Esplin, J. Scott Judd and Kari Joseph Olsen

Accounting and Finance, 2025, vol. 65, issue 3, 2950-2975

Abstract: We examine whether CEO narcissism is associated with management forecast issuance and how investors respond to those forecasts. Narcissists look for opportunities for self‐enhancement, and earnings forecasts provide a setting to demonstrate managerial skills. We find that narcissistic CEOs are more likely to issue management forecasts. We document that forecasts issued by narcissistic CEOs are no more likely to be missed, no more optimistically biased, no less precise, and no less accurate than those issued by non‐narcissistic CEOs. We find that investors respond less favourably to good news management earnings forecasts from narcissistic CEOs. Our results suggest that investors treat management earnings forecasts from narcissistic CEOs as lacking credibility, even though they have similar forecast properties to those issued by less narcissistic CEOs.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/acfi.70026

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:acctfi:v:65:y:2025:i:3:p:2950-2975

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0810-5391

Access Statistics for this article

Accounting and Finance is currently edited by Robert Faff

More articles in Accounting and Finance from Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().