Management quality is known to influence depository institution performance, but less understood are the characteristics of managers that influence performance. We empirically examine how the political ideology of a credit union’s CEO influenced decision making and performance during the financial crisis. Our results indicate that the return on assets of credit unions run by conservative CEOs are 22 basis points lower during the crisis relative to liberal CEOs. Returns are shown to be lower as a direct result of credit unions with conservative CEOs applying more conservative accounting practices for loan losses than their counterparts during the crisis, despite similar loan quality.

众所周知，管理质量会影响存款机构的绩效，但对影响绩效的管理人员的特征却知之甚少。我们实证研究了信用合作社 CEO 的政治意识形态如何影响金融危机期间的决策和绩效。我们的结果表明，在危机期间，由保守派 CEO 经营的信用合作社的资产回报率比自由派 CEO 低 22 个基点。尽管贷款质量相似，但由于信用合作社的直接结果显示回报率较低，在危机期间，保守的 CEO 对贷款损失采用更保守的会计做法。