Examining the Impact of Female Chief Executive Officers on Firm Value, Firm Profitability, and Investor Response to Chief Executive Announcements : A study on gender differences of publicly listed firms in Sweden

This study examines the impact of chief executive officer (CEO) gender on firm value and firm profitability and the announcement effect of CEO gender on cumulative abnormal return (CAR). Previous research has focused on measuring CEO gender with ROA which is a historic accounting measure of profitability. From the investors perspective, firm value proxied by Tobin’s Q shows future growth potential by including market value of equity and is a superior measure when analyzing CEO gender impact. A cross-sectional OLS regression analysis on a sample of 573 firms with 54 firms having female CEOs listed on Nasdaq Stockholm Stock Exchange and First North Growth Market for the year 2023 was done. For the announcement effect, a paired t-test was made on 42 CEO announcements in order to find statistical significance in the differences in CAR. The data was gathered from the LSEG Data & Analytics database with the regression being done through the statistical software programme STATA. The results provide no statistical significance that CEO gender would have an impact on firm value compared to firm profitability. However, this study provides exploratory evidence of a relationship between firm value and CEO gender in particular industries. Additionally, this study concludes that there is no statistical difference in the CAR of the announcements of CEO gender.