| This paper investigates the market reaction of a CEO turnover. Motivated by the wage gap, gender discrimination, research on women in business, and the "queueing" view, I compare the market reaction to the announcement of a Female CEO against an announcement of a Male CEO. Using a five-dimensional match consisting of turnover of CEO, industry, effective date of announcement, size, and leverage I employ three benchmark models and two aggregation methods to test abnormal returns. Results indicate that a Female CEO announcement results in a small insignificant negative reaction, whereas a Male CEO announcement results in an economically and statistically significant negative reaction. Analysis of compensation data indicates that Female CEOs are compensated with more equity based compensation, although this difference is statistically insignificant. |
