Peasant youth experiences of CEOs, risk aversion and corporate performance

This article examines the impact of spiritual tempering on corporate performance by investigating the experiences of CEOs who were part of the “peasant youth” between 1957 and 1976 in China. Using a sample of China’s listed companies and by developing propensity score matching and a difference-in-differences model, we find that CEOs who had profound peasant youth experiences have a stronger awareness of risk prevention and that these experiences lead to an improvement in corporate performance of over 3%. In addition, the positive impact of CEOs’ peasant youth experience on corporate performance is pronounced in either state-owned or non-state-owned enterprises. Overall, this study confirms that spiritual tempering has a significant positive impact on corporate performance.