The Impact of Family-Based Human Capital on Corporate Innovation: Evidence from Sibling-Chairpersons in China
研究中国家族企业中董事长有兄弟姐妹（相对于无兄弟姐妹）带来的家庭人力资本对企业创新的影响，发现这类企业专利更多、创新效率和质量更高，且机制包括竞争、知识溢出和家族企业继承效应。
We examine the impact of family-based human capital stemming from a chairperson’s having siblings vis-à-vis not having siblings on corporate innovation in Chinese family firms. Using hand-collected data, we document that when a firm has a sibling-chairperson, it holds more patents, receives more total citations to its patents, and has greater innovation efficiency and innovation quality than an otherwise equivalent firm with a chairperson having no siblings. The results are economically significant and robust to a battery of robustness checks. Specifically, the findings remain intact after using China’s one-child policy as an exogenous shock to apply a regression discontinuity research design to mitigate endogeneity. Additional analyses suggest that the mechanisms behind the impact of siblings on innovation are consistent with family-based human capital embedded in the sibling relationships such as competition, knowledge spillover, and family firm succession effect among siblings. Furthermore, we show that sibling comanagement and sibling gender diversity matter in corporate innovation. In addition, sibling effect enhances corporate investment efficiency, stock returns, and merger and acquisition performance. Overall, family-based human capital from siblings positively contributes to corporate innovation. This paper was accepted by Victoria Ivashina, finance. Funding: The authors acknowledge financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 72225005 and 72202249] and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation [Grant 2022M713658]. Supplemental Material: Data are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4965 .