This isn't particularly convincing, given that it's such a small and skewed sample and the effect is so small. The average CEO in this sample operates a firm o

This isn't particularly convincing, given that it's such a small and skewed sample and the effect is so small. The average CEO in this sample operates a firm of 8B and makes 8M - the effect they found was 30M for firm size and 19K for annual comp for each percentage decrease in pitch. It's quite likely that merely adding, say, Steve Jobs or Michael Bloomberg into the sample would've been enough to reverse the effect. Also, what would be much more interesting is if CEOs as a group were substantially different from the general population in this regard - but they are saying the median CEO wasn't at all extraordinary. To the extent that there is an effect, I think the causality may be the other way - voice pitch isn't an immutable characteristic of each speaker but situational. One well-known effect is that people tend to speak with a higher pitch when talking to relatively high status people and a lower pitch when talking to relatively low status people. It seems quite possible that CEOs of larger companies perceive wall street analysts and investors as lower status than CEOs of smaller companies do, causing this discrepancy. It seems far more plausible than lower-pitched men being CEOs of disproportionately larger firms, without the same effect holding up across the entire professional spectrum.