This paper investigates the effect of superstar CEOs on their competitors. Exploiting shocks to CEO status due to prestigious media awards, we document a significant positive stock market performance of competitors of superstar CEOs subsequent to the award. The effect is more pronounced for...

Ordinary least squares (OLS) estimates are frequently used to measure the effects of managerial incentives on corporate innovation. However, these estimates suffer from two data problems. First, corporate innovation data have a discrete spike at zero because many firms never engage in corporate...

M&A deals in the US are done mostly at the domestic level. We examine the M&A performance of US acquirers during 1991-2014 based on the enhanced innovative capacity afforded by cross-border deals. We find that US firms engaging in cross-border M&A have superior innovative capacity, which results...

We show evidence that female board representation is associated with greater innovative success, and thus enhances firm performance in innovation-intensive industries. Firms with female directors tend to invest more in innovation and obtain more patents and citations for given R&D expenditures....

Using data on birthplaces of 2,065 CEOs and a local measure of cultural individualism based on the westward expansion in American history, I find a positive relation between CEO cultural individualism and corporate innovation. Firms with individualistic CEOs file more patents and receive more...

We find evidence that chief executive officers' (CEOs') hobby of flying airplanes is associated with significantly better innovation outcomes, measured by patents and citations, greater innovation effectiveness, and more diverse and original patents. We rule out alternative explanations, leading...