We provide evidence that firms managed by CEOs with high general ability, or broad experience in their background, are more likely to utilize discretionary accruals to manage earnings than CEOs with focused experience. Cross-sectional variation suggests that the mechanism underlying the increased use of discretionary accruals is generalist CEOs’ increased willingness to bear the risk inherent in managing earnings given their enhanced tolerance for failure stemming from outside career options. Importantly, the practice is more pronounced for CEOs of firms with suspect earnings. To better control for unobservable variation between generalists and specialists, we use a propensity score-match sample and entropy balancing to adjust the sample to balance differences between firms with generalists and firms with specialists and firm fixed effects. The evidence suggests that the diversity of CEOs’ experience influences incentives to manage earnings. The increased trend to hire generalist CEOs may be coupled with an unintended increase in the use of discretionary accruals, largely stemming from the outside employment options of these executives.

我们提供的证据表明，由具有高综合能力或丰富背景经验的首席执行官管理的公司比具有集中经验的首席执行官更有可能利用可自由支配的应计利润来管理收益。横截面变化表明，增加使用可自由支配的应计利润的机制是，由于通才首席执行官对外部职业选择导致的失败的容忍度增强，因此他们更愿意承担管理收益所固有的风险。重要的是，这种做法对于盈利可疑的公司的首席执行官来说更为明显。为了更好地控制通才和专家之间不可观察的差异，我们使用倾向得分匹配样本和熵平衡来调整样本，以平衡通才公司和专家公司以及公司固定效应之间的差异。有证据表明，首席执行官经验的多样性会影响管理收益的动机。雇用通才首席执行官的趋势增加可能伴随着可自由支配应计费用的使用意外增加，这主要源于这些高管的外部就业选择。