On Monday, May 27, 2019, Luc Meunier, a doctoral student in management sciences at theInstitute for Research in Management and Economics (IREGE), will defend his dissertation titled “Risk Preference in Executive Financial Investment: A Matter of Financial Incentives?”
The defense will take place at 2:30 p.m. in Room 103 at IREGE on the Annecy campus.
Thesis summary
In this thesis, we explore the determinants of risk-taking in agency situations for a firm. We show that agency situations lead to a neutralization of risk preferences—in terms of standard deviation and kurtosis—in the absence of clear incentive contracts. We also highlight that personality, as measured by the MBTI dimensions, is linked to risk aversion. We conduct a literature review in the field of neurofinance, which emphasizes that numerous neurophysiological variables are also associated with financial behaviors, including risk-taking. Finally, we show that while risk-taking is indeed influenced by contract design, personality and neurophysiological variables (salivary testosterone and cortisol levels in our case) remain the primary determinants of choice, both in economic terms and in terms of explanatory power.