The existing literature provides strong evidence that working capital management affects a firm’s performance and value. In this paper, we examine how CEO age affects firms’ working capital decisions. Using a sample of 28,243 firm-year observations of U.S. firms from 1993 to 2018, we find that net operating working capital increases with CEO age, and firms with younger CEOs hold lower levels of inventory and higher levels of payables. The results are robust to various model specifications and variable definitions, providing strong and robust evidence that younger CEOs tend to implement more aggressive working capital management policies (Aggressive strategy hypothesis). The findings provide important insights to the board of directors, investors, and various monitoring groups.

现有文献提供了有力的证据，表明营运资金管理会影响公司的业绩和价值。在本文中，我们研究了CEO年龄如何影响公司的营运资本决策。使用1993年至2018年对美国公司的28,243个公司年度观察样本，我们发现净营运资金随着CEO年龄的增长而增加，而拥有更年轻CEO的公司所持有的存货水平较低且应付账款水平较高。结果对各种模型规范和变量定义均具有鲁棒性，提供了有力且有力的证据，表明年轻的CEO倾向于实施更具侵略性的营运资本管理政策（激进战略假设）。这些发现为董事会，投资者和各个监督小组提供了重要的见解。