CEO Behavior and Firm Performance

Andrea Prat, Stephen Hansen, Raffaella Sadun and Oriana Bandiera

No 11960, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: We measure the behavior of 1,114 CEOs in Brazil, France, Germany, India, UK and US using a new methodology that combines (i) data on every activity the CEOs undertake during one workweek and (ii) a machine learning algorithm that projects these data onto scalar CEO behavior indices. Low values of the index are associated with plant visits, and one-on-one meetings with production or suppliers, while high values correlate with meetings with high-level C-suite executives, and several functions together, both from inside and outside the firm. We use these data to study the correlation between CEO behavior and firm performance within the framework of a firm-CEO assignment model. We show results consistent with significant firm-CEO assignment frictions, which appear to be more severe in lower-income regions. The productivity loss generated by inefficient assignment is equal to 13% of the productivity gap between high- and low-income countries in our sample.

Keywords: Ceo; Leadership; Unsupervised learning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec and nep-hrm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (39)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP11960 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Journal Article: CEO Behavior and Firm Performance (2020)
Working Paper: CEO behavior and firm performance (2020)
Working Paper: CEO Behavior and Firm Performance (2017)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:11960

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP11960

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().