学术活动

10:30 am - 12:00 pm, April 21, 2026 (Tuesday)

Prof. Yuyan Guan

Nanyang Technological University

Using CEO Twitter engagement as an empirical setting, we analyze whether boards adjust equity-based incentives to balance the potential benefits and risks of CEOs’ social media communication. Drawing on data from S&P 1500 firms between 2010 and 2023, we find a positive association between the intensity of CEO Twitter activity and flow delta, and some evidence of a negative association with flow vega. These results suggest that boards increase pay-for-performance sensitivity to discipline CEOs’ social media behavior, while avoiding additional risk-taking incentives that could encourage speculative or controversial tweeting. The positive relation between Twitter activity and flow delta is more pronounced in well-governed firms, consistent with stronger corporate governance facilitating efficient contracting. Our findings remain robust after controlling firm-by-CEO fixed effects, employing instrumental variable analyses that exploit exogenous variation in Twitter usage, restricting the sample to newly appointed CEOs, and applying entropy balancing. Further analyses show that higher flow delta discourages non-work-related, negative, and uncertain tweets and strengthens the positive relation between CEO Twitter activity and firm value. Overall, the evidence indicates that boards employ traditional incentive mechanisms to govern CEO behavior in the digital era, aligning CEO social media engagement with shareholder value creation.