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Description
By matching a CEO's place of residence in his or her formative years with U.S. Census survey data, I obtain an estimate of the CEO's family wealth and study the link between the CEO's endowed social status and firm performance. I find that, on average, CEOs born into poor families

By matching a CEO's place of residence in his or her formative years with U.S. Census survey data, I obtain an estimate of the CEO's family wealth and study the link between the CEO's endowed social status and firm performance. I find that, on average, CEOs born into poor families outperform those born into wealthy families, as measured by a variety of proxies for firm performance. There is no evidence of higher risk-taking by the CEOs from low social status backgrounds. Further, CEOs from less privileged families perform better in firms with high R&D spending but they underperform CEOs from wealthy families when firms operate in a more uncertain environment. Taken together, my results show that endowed family wealth of a CEO is useful in identifying his or her managerial ability.
ContributorsDu, Fangfang (Author) / Babenko, Ilona (Thesis advisor) / Bates, Thomas (Thesis advisor) / Tserlukevich, Yuri (Committee member) / Wang, Jessie (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
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Description
The first chapter uses data on birthplaces of 2,065 Chief Executive Officers (CEO) and a county-level measure of cultural individualism based on the westward expansion in American history to establish a positive relation between CEO cultural individ- ualism and corporate innovation. Difference-in-differences estimations around CEO turnovers support the causality. Individualistic

The first chapter uses data on birthplaces of 2,065 Chief Executive Officers (CEO) and a county-level measure of cultural individualism based on the westward expansion in American history to establish a positive relation between CEO cultural individ- ualism and corporate innovation. Difference-in-differences estimations around CEO turnovers support the causality. Individualistic CEOs increase innovation by creating an innovative corporate culture, providing more flexibility to employees, and tolerance for failure.The second chapter develops a model to study the corporate board structure and communication. Outside directors are related to potential competitors. As a result, they can bring valuable advice and cause information leakage. The firm needs to decide whether to have outside directors on the board. In the presence of the outside director, the other directors need to determine whether to communicate.
ContributorsZhang, Fan (Author) / Boguth, Oliver (Thesis advisor) / Babenko, Ilona (Committee member) / Schiller, Christoph (Committee member) / Wang, Jessie Jiaxu (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022