Our paper examines the relationship between industry tournament incentives for CEOs and corporate innovation. We find that the external pay gap is positively associated with subsequent innovation output and its economic value. Our results are robust to using different industry classifications, alternative measures of industry tournament incentives and innovation, and various controls for corporate governance, business strategy, and CEO attributes. We employ a quasi-natural experiment and an instrumental-variable approach to mitigate endogeneity concerns. We also find evidence of a positive and significant relationship between industry tournament incentives and idiosyncratic risk. Overall, the evidence is consistent with our contention that aspirant CEOs undertake innovation projects which can generate uncertain but potentially rewarding outcomes that increase the likelihood of the aspirant standing out and winning the tournament or extracting the tournament-induced benefits internally.

中文翻译：

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行业赛事激励与企业创新

我们的论文研究了针对 CEO 的行业锦标赛激励与企业创新之间的关系。我们发现，外部薪酬差距与后续创新产出及其经济价值呈正相关。我们的结果对于使用不同的行业分类、行业锦标赛激励和创新的替代措施以及对公司治理、业务战略和 CEO 属性的各种控制是稳健的。我们采用准自然实验和工具变量方法来减轻内生性问题。我们还发现了行业锦标赛激励与特殊风险之间存在积极且显着关系的证据。全面的，