Are Researcher CEOs Better Innovators?
78 Pages Posted: 29 Aug 2022 Last revised: 18 Dec 2022
George J. Jiang
Washington State University
Wenquan Li
University of Queensland - Business School
Yaohua Li
University of Glasgow
He Wang
Southern University of Science and Technology
Date Written: December 17, 2022
Abstract
This paper investigates the impact of CEO research experience on corporate innovation. We show that firms managed by researcher CEOs have significantly higher investments in innovative activities and generate more innovation output. In addition, we show that researcher CEOs accomplish this improvement by increasing firms’ innovative effectiveness. In particular, CEO research experience has a substitution effect for hiring more R&D employees. Further evidence suggests that our results are mainly driven by CEOs’ work experience in research institutions. We employ CEO exogenous turnover and demonstrate that the impact of CEO research experience on corporate innovation is causal. Moreover, we show that the effect of researcher CEOs on innovation is stronger for firms with high analyst coverage or high long-term institutional ownership. Overall, our findings suggest that researcher CEOs are better innovators and help promote corporate innovation.
Keywords: Corporate innovation; CEO research experience; Innovative effectiveness; Analyst coverage; Institutional ownership
JEL Classification: G34, J24, O31, O32
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
George Jiang
Washington State University ( email )
Department of Finance and Management Science
Carson College of Business
Pullman, WA 99-4746164
United States
509-3354474 (Phone)
HOME PAGE: http://directory.business.wsu.edu/bio.html?username=george.jiang
Wenquan Li
University of Queensland - Business School ( email )
Brisbane, Queensland 4072
Australia
Yaohua Li
University of Glasgow ( email )
Adam Smith Business School
Glasgow, Scotland G12 8LE
United Kingdom
He Wang (Contact Author)
Southern University of Science and Technology ( email )
1088 Xueyuan Avenue
Shenzhen, Guangdong 518055
China
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