The Effect of Board Directors from Countries with Different Genetic Diversity Levels on Corporate Performance
研究发现，董事会成员来自遗传多样性水平不同的国家（无论更高或更低）能提升企业绩效，该效应在控制多种因素后依然显著。
We link genetic diversity in the country of origin of the firms’ board members with corporate performance via board members’ nationality. We hypothesize that our approach captures deep-rooted differences in cultural, institutional, social, psychological, physiological, and other traits that cannot be captured by other recently measured indices of diversity. Using a panel of firms listed in the North American and UK stock markets, we find that adding board directors from countries with different levels of genetic diversity (either higher or lower) increases firm performance. This effect prevails when we control for a number of cultural, institutional, firm-level, and board member characteristics, as well as for the nationality of the board of directors. To identify the relationship, we use—as instrumental variables for our diversity indices—the migratory distance from East Africa and the level of ultraviolet exposure in the directors’ country of nationality. This paper was accepted by Wei Jiang, finance.