PhD CEOs and firm performance

Urquhart, A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8834-4243 and Zhang, H. (2022) PhD CEOs and firm performance. European Financial Management, 28 (2). pp. 433-481. ISSN 1468-036X doi: 10.1111/eufm.12316

Abstract/Summary

This paper investigates the relationship between the education of a CEO and firm performance and provides robust evidence that firms led by CEOs with PhDs outperform their peers. We find that CEOs with PhDs increase firm performance by 3.03% while CEOs with a PhD from a highly ranked university increase firm performance by 4.65%. Our results are robust to endogenous CEO selection, transition firms, alternative rankings, unobserved firm characteristics and the network of the CEO. We also show that the increase in firm performance is due to a tighter control of costs and superior cash flow management.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/97044
Identification Number/DOI	10.1111/eufm.12316
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Henley Business School > Finance and Accounting
Publisher	Wiley
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