Board Networks and Corporate Innovation
研究发现董事会网络对企业创新活动和质量有积极影响，尤其在咨询需求高或代理问题严重的企业中更显著，且与银行家的联系有助于外部融资需求大的企业。
This paper studies whether board connectedness affects corporate innovation. We find that well-connected boards have a positive effect on innovation activities and quality. The effect is stronger when firms have higher demand for advising or face more severe agency problems. Firms with greater needs for external finance benefit more from board connections with bankers. We show that the positive relation is causal and robust based on a battery of empirical tests including exogenous variation in board connectedness resulting from death and retirement of directors and from a regulatory shock under new exchange listing rules. Evidence indicates that types and relatedness of connections as well as director characteristics contribute to cross-sectional heterogeneity of the positive effect. This paper was accepted by Gustavo Manso, finance.