Risk Attitudes in the Board Room and Company Performance: Evidence for an Emerging Economy

We personally interview thirteen board members of seven (out of the ten) companies listed at the
Suriname Stock Exchange and ask questions about their past and current decisions and on their
risk attitudes. Next, we correlate the answers to company performance in between 2003-2011, like
earnings per share, stock returns, book value and market value. Recent literature on risk attitudes
in the board, which usually draws on western economies, guides our formulation of hypotheses.
At the same time we also perform some exploratory analyses. Our main result is that, for this
emerging economy, more risk adversity leads to better firm performance.