In the Mood for Creativity : Sunshine-Induced Mood, Inventor Performance, and Firm Value

We examine the role that the emotional and mental states of innovative workers have on firm value through the innovation channel. Analyzing a large inventor-level dataset, we find that sunshine-induced mood is positively associated with the economic value that inventors generate for their firms via their patenting activity. These inventor-level results aggregate to the firm-level, where in a statistical horse-race, average sunshine-exposure of the firm’s inventor-base increase patent value by a significantly larger margin relative to other documented behavioral determinants of corporate innovation, including CEO overconfidence or CEO thrill-seeking. Our study highlights the importance of emotional and other psychological states of innovative workers for firm value through the innovation channel