Top Management Team Finance Education: Implications for Stock Price Synchronicity and Crash Risk

Based on a dataset of listed Taiwanese firms spanning 2006–2023, this study documents a robust negative association between the presence of top management team members with finance‐related education (MFE) and both stock price synchronicity and crash risk. These effects persist after robustness checks and controls for endogeneity. Furthermore, these negative associations are particularly pronounced in firms led by finance‐educated executives with undergraduate degrees or elite educational credentials, and in settings with weak external monitoring—specifically, low analyst coverage, sparse media exposure, and minimal institutional ownership. Mediation analysis reveals that high‐MFE firms exhibit superior information disclosure quality. The overall findings support the “dual substantive and symbolic functions” hypothesis: Firms with a higher proportion of finance‐educated executives—whether driven by substantive intent or symbolic signaling—more effectively direct investor attention toward firm‐specific information, thereby improving disclosure quality and reducing stock price synchronicity and crash risk. This study contributes to the literature by identifying MFE’s attention‐directing role and its broader implications for information efficiency in capital markets.