The relationship between CEO age and corporate risk-taking has remained inconclusive after decades of research. This study contends that CEO may have different risk-taking propensities at different age stages and the relationship could be better captured by nonlinear function. Using a large sample of 6169 firm-year observations of public listed companies in Malaysia, we study the risk-taking behaviour of CEO for the period of 2009 to 2017. We find that CEO age has an inverse U-shaped relationship, such that risk-taking increases with CEO age but reduces beyond certain age threshold. Besides, drawing on socioemotional wealth perspective, we further examine the moderating effect of family CEO. We find that near-retirement family CEO reverses the conservative behaviour at old age and results an inverse S-curved relationship. Findings of this paper yields implication for family business and policymakers seeking to encourage risk-taking behaviour in emerging countries.

中文翻译：

---

马来西亚家族企业的 CEO 年龄和风险承担：逆 S 曲线关系

经过数十年的研究，CEO 年龄与企业风险承担之间的关系仍然没有定论。本研究认为 CEO 在不同年龄阶段可能具有不同的冒险倾向，非线性函数可以更好地捕捉这种关系。我们利用马来西亚上市公司 6169 家公司年度观察的大样本，研究了 2009 年至 2017 年 CEO 的冒险行为。我们发现 CEO 年龄呈倒 U 型关系，即风险- 收入随着 CEO 年龄的增长而增加，但在超过一定年龄阈值后会减少。此外，借鉴社会情感财富的视角，我们进一步考察了家族CEO的调节作用。我们发现，接近退休的家族 CEO 逆转了晚年的保守行为，并导致反向 S 曲线关系。