In this study we analyze how CEO risk incentives affect the efficiency of research and development (R&D) investments. We examine a sample of 843 cases where firms increase their R&D investments by an economically significant amount over the period from 1995 to 2006. We find that firms with...

We examine the effect of protection of proprietary information on forced CEO turnover decisions. Relying on changes in the enforceability of the covenant-not-to-compete, we show that strengthening the protection of proprietary information increases the likelihood of forced CEO turnover and the...

This paper examines the relationship between CEOs’ individualistic cultural background and corporate innovation among firms in the United States. Using hand-collected data on birthplaces of US-born CEOs, we provide robust evidence that CEOs born in frontier counties with a higher level of...

We investigate the relationship between internal governance and firms' innovation. We hypothesize that internal governance stemming from the difference in expected employment horizons between a CEO and her subordinate executives improves a firm's innovation. Using the age difference between a...

This paper addresses a question faced by every firm in the economy, namely is it optimal for a firm's founder to lead the company as CEO? To identify the treatment effect of founder CEOs on corporate policy and firm value, I exploit a natural experiment involving exogenous...

One-in-five U.S. high-technology firms are led by CEOs with hands-on innovation experience as inventors. Firms led by “Inventor CEOs” are associated with higher quality innovation, especially when the CEO is a high-impact inventor. During an Inventor CEO's tenure, firms file a greater number...

This paper provides highly significant evidence that golden parachutes spur innovation in concentrated-ownership corporations and State-Owned-Enterprises (SOEs). Taking advantage of China's institutional features, we find that golden parachutes lead to higher levels of innovation quantity and...

We explore the relation between antitakeover provisions (i.e. managerial entrenchment) and firm performance in innovation. Empirical results indicate that an increase in antitakeover provisions is negatively related to number of patents and number of citations to patents. Thus managers who are...

Prior research has often taken the view that entrenched managers tend to avoid debt. Contrary to this view, we find that firms with entrenched managers, as measured by the Gompers et al. (2003) governance index, use more debt finance and have higher leverage ratios. To address the potential...

We exploit exogenous variations in CEO turnover to investigate the influence of successor CEOs on corporate innovation. Using difference-in-differences (DID) and a battery of robustness tests, our results reveal that CEO turnover matters and triggers economically significant improvements in both...