Should your shareholders or employees know that you are divorcing your spouse—for the sake of the business?

Some researchers are looking into what effects a CEO’s personal life may have on job performance. In an article in the Wall Street Journal, reporter Mark Maremont analyzes an emerging area of financial research that looks at the lives of executives and possible links to stocks prices and corporate performance.

Will an executive’s mansion purchase lead to an underperforming stock? In the case of CEO Trevor Fetter of Tenet Healthcare, yes, according to the article. Researchers David Yermack of New York University and Crocker Liu of Arizona State University have studied executives’ home purchases in a paper, “Where are the Shareholders' Mansions? CEOs' Home Purchases, Stock Sales, and Subsequent Company Performance.”

In another study cited in the article, three finance professors use data from the Danish government to track links between CEO-family deaths and the companies’ profitability over 10 years. (It turns out profitability declined by an average of one-fifth in the two years after the death of a CEO’s child and by about 15% after the death of a spouse, according to the study.)