Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Investors may be mistaking privilege for competence, rewarding privately educated CEOs with lower perceived risk despite no evidence they perform or behave differently. In a new study from the University of Surrey, published in European Financial Management , researchers show that firms run by CEOs who attended private school experience lower stock market volatility, despite no meaningful differences in performance, decision-making or crisis management. Instead, the effect seems to be driven by perception, with investors interpreting elite backgrounds as a signal of competence and stability. The study found that firms led by privately educated CEOs had around 5% lower stock volatility on average. However, there was no evidence that these CEOs took fewer risks, delivered better results or handled crises more effectively than their peers. Researchers analyzed decades of data on US firms, using private school attendance as an indicator of a CEO's socioeconomic background.…