Managerial Overconfidence and Labor Misallocation

Drawing on behavioral finance theory, this study examines whether chief executive officer (CEO) overconfidence impairs labor-investment efficiency (LIE) in Korean listed firms. Using 7,746 firm-year observations from KOSPI-listed (non-financial) companies over 2010-2023, we proxy LIE by abnormal net hiring (AB_NET_HIRE)—the absolute deviation of actual net hiring from that predicted by economic fundamentals following Pinnuck and Lillis [24]. CEO overconfidence is captured by a composite measure integrating (i) an industry-adjusted capital-expenditure dummy Ahmed and Duellman [3] and (ii) an over-investment residual dummy [26]. Firm- and year-fixed-effects regressions, together with Heckman two-stage selection corrections and two-stage least squares (2SLS) estimations that instrument with industry-level investment shocks, show that the presence of an overconfident CEO significantly increases labor-investment inefficiency. The effect is stronger in the subsample characterized by labor over-investment, indicating asymmetry. These results are robust across alternative overconfidence proxies and to machine-learning validation tests (XGBoost; 1D-CNN) that relax parametric functional-form assumptions. Economic interpretation suggests that overconfident CEOs systematically overestimate future cash flows, proactively over-hire relative to fundamentals, and thereby distort the allocation of human capital. The evidence highlights the importance of enhanced board oversight and performance-linked workforce planning systems to mitigate behavioral-driven resource misallocation in labor.