Impact of CEO characteristics on corporate tax avoidance: GMM approach in French listed firms

Research Question: How do CEO characteristics affect corporate tax avoidance level?Motivation: Few studies have addressed this topic in the French context.In addition, this research investigates the combined effect on tax avoidance of CEO characteristics.Indeed, prior studies analyzed each characteristic effect taken separately; i.e CEO tenure, CEO compensation, CEO duality, CEO ownership.In this respect, our study will shed further light on the question.Idea: We examine the effect of chief executive officer (CEO) characteristics on corporate tax avoidance level.CEO characteristics as CEO duality, CEO compensation, CEO ownership, CEO financial expertise, and CEO tenure were used as the independent variables.Data: We use a sample of 34 companies listed on the CAC 40 during the 2013-2021 period.Tools: We use the GMM estimation for panel data.CEO characteristics data were handcollected from companies' annual reports, and financial data were obtained from Datastream database.