Paper Title
THE DETERMINANTS OF THE GENERAL CEO CONFIDENCE LEVEL

Abstract
Abstract - I investigate what factors can help to explain the general CEO confidence level (measured by the moneyness of CEOs’ unexercised exercisable in-the-money options) and how the general CEO confidence level relates to firms’ future performance. My results show that CEO age, CEO rank by current compensation and firm size are negatively correlated with the general CEO confidence level, while gender (i.e. 1 signifies male) and Tobin’s Q are positively correlated with the general CEO confidence level. I also find a significant negative correlation between the general CEO confidence level and firms’ future performance, which suggests that, in general, CEOs’ ability to predict future performance is poor. Keywords – Confidence Compensation Moneyness JEF classification - G3