This paper investigates the relationship between the education of a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and firm performance and provides robust evidence that firms led by CEOs with PhDs outperform their peers. We find that CEOs with PhDs increase firm performance by 3.03% while CEOs with a PhD from a highly ranked university increase firm performance by 4.65%. Our results are robust to endogenous CEO selection, transition firms, alternative rankings, unobserved firm characteristics and the network of the CEO. We also show that the increase in firm performance is due to a tighter control of costs and superior cash flow management.

中文翻译：

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博士 CEO 与公司绩效

本文调查了首席执行官 (CEO) 的教育与公司绩效之间的关系，并提供了强有力的证据，证明由拥有博士学位的首席执行官领导的公司优于同行。我们发现，拥有博士学位的 CEO 可将公司绩效提高 3.03%，而拥有名牌大学博士学位的 CEO 可将公司绩效提高 4.65%。我们的结果对内生 CEO 选择、转型公司、替代排名、未观察到的公司特征和 CEO 网络具有稳健性。我们还表明，公司业绩的提高是由于对成本的更严格控制和卓越的现金流管理。