While previous empirical literature has examined the effect of founder-CEOs on firm performance, it has largely ignored the effect of firm performance on founder-CEO status.(...)

In this paper we explore some possible consequences of fallibility in managerial decision making for firm performance. Based on Sah and Stiglitz (1991), we develop the hypothesis that if managers are fallible, firm performance will be more variable as the number of managers participating in...

We use instrumental variables methods to disentangle the effect of founder–CEOs on performance from the effect of performance on founder–CEO status. Our instruments for founder–CEO status are the proportion of the firm's founders that are dead and the number of people who founded the...

Executives can only impact firm outcomes if they have influence over crucial decisions. Based on this idea we develop and test the hypothesis that firms whose CEOs have more decision-making power should experience more variability in performance. We construct proxies for the CEO's power to...

Executives can only impact firm outcomes if they have influence over crucial decisions. On the basis of this idea, we develop and test the hypothesis that firms whose CEOs have more decision-making power should experience more variability in performance. Focusing primarily on the power the CEO...

Sah (1991) conjectured that more centralized societies should have more volatile economic performances than less centralized ones. We show in this paper that this is true both for cross-country and within-country variability in growth rates. It is also true for some measures of policies....

We use instrumental variables methods to disentangle the effect of founder-CEOs on performance from the effect of performance on founder-CEO status. Our instruments for founder-CEO status are the proportion of the firm's founders that are dead and the number of people who founded the company. We...