关键词: 管理者风险偏好, 债务扩张, 杠杆操纵, 财务困境, 激励约束

Abstract: Managers play a key role in financial decision-making of enterprises, and to a certain extent, can transform their personal preferences into corporate behavior. This paper, using a sample of A-share listed companies from 2015 to 2021, explores the intermediary pathways and governance mechanism through which managerial risk preferences on the formation of financial distress in enterprises. The results show that higher managerial risk preference increases the likelihood of financial distress, mainly through the intermediary effect of debt expansion and leverage manipulation. These findings remain robust after controlling for endogeneity and conducting robustness tests. The heterogeneity analysis shows that in non-state-owned enterprises, enterprises with low capacity utilization, those in poor financing environments, and those operating in highly uncertain environments, managerial risk preference has a more pronounced positive effect on financial distress. Further research indicates that both salary incentive and equity incentive in the incentive mechanism as well as internal controls in the constraint mechanism can effectively mitigate   financial distress caused by managerial risk preference. However, the effect of external audits in reducing financial distress is not significant, suggesting that the governance effect of homogenized external audit is limited. The research conclusion helps to clarify the generation mechanism of enterprise financial distress from the perspective of managerial risk preference, and has a positive reference value for alleviating agency conflict and resolving enterprise financial distress.

Key words: managerial risk reference, debt expansion, leverage manipulation, financial distress, incentive constraint