Born to innovate? The birth‐order effect of CEOs on corporate innovation
研究发现，头胎出生的CEO所在企业创新较少，且在风险较高、非国有或融资约束较小的公司中影响更显著，支持了兄弟姐妹竞争使头胎者创新性较弱的观点。
Abstract This study explores the effect of CEO birth order on corporate innovation. Using hand‐collected data, we find that firms led by firstborn CEOs are less innovative. This finding survives a number of robustness checks. When firms are more risky, non‐state‐owned or less financially constrained, the association between birth order and innovation is stronger, suggesting that the negative impact of firstborn CEOs is larger when their innovative personality is more demanding or influential. Meanwhile, firstborn CEOs have larger impact on corporate innovation when they are born in cities where Confucian culture are more influential or grow up in a low‐income family, consistent with our argument that sibling competition makes firstborns less innovative. Overall, our results suggest that firstborn CEOs have negative effect on corporate innovation because they are less innovative intrinsically.