We’d like to be a fly on the wall the first time a valuation expert testifies that his or her company-specific risk factor was adjusted for the age and gender of the subject firm’s top managers. In defense of this position, the expert may point to a new paper, “Age, Gender, and Risk-Taking: Evidence From the S&P 1,500 Executives and Market-Based Measures of Firm Risk,” which appears in the new issue of the Journal of Business Finance and Accounting. The paper delves into the question of whether firms with older and female executives are less risky, a notion supported by anecdotal experience and prior literature (in psychology and experimental economics) on age- and gender-related behavioral differences. Using data from the S&P 1,500 firms, the authors find that “firms led by older CEOs and CFOs have less volatile stock returns and lower idiosyncratic risk.” As for gender, their conclusions are “more equivocal,” finding that female-led firms may reduce firm-specific risk tendencies … a little. We don’t envision age and gender being added to company-specific risk models as separate and distinct factors. Typecasting certain individuals when doing an assessment of management could present problems on a number of levels.