Topic: Top Executives' Research Experience and Corporate Innovation: Evidence from China
Time: 9:00 a.m.-11:00 a.m. 18th June 2021
Venue: Conference Room 127, Wenqin Building
Host: Professor Lu Yuanping
Guest Speaker: Jiang Shengjun
PhD in Economics from The Ohio State University; Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics, School of Economics and Management, Wuhan University
Introduction:
Since the 1980s, China has constantly reformed policies on the human resource management of its scientific research systems, gradually allowing professors and researchers to take part-time jobs or start their own businesses. However, the effects of such policies have rarely been explored in the literature. This study examines why, and to what extent, firms with executive researchers (defined as chairperson of the board and/or chief executive who were formerly professors or researchers) have better innovation performance. Based on manually collected data on top executive’s work experience, as well as data on patents and citations of Chinese listed manufacturing firms from 2001 to 2015, we find that firms with executive researchers have both higher quantity and quality of innovation output than firms without.