Impact of CEO characteristics on firm performance: evidence from China listed firms

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the influence of CEO characteristics on firm performance. Our sample data consists of 10,446 observations from Chinese listed companies taken during the period 2008–2016. After applying a Quantile Regression approach, we find that CEO age has no obvious impact on firm performance, a finding that clearly differs from previous research. CEO tenure only has a highly significant negative impact on high valuation firms (at the 75th and 90th). Furthermore, while CEO political ties are positively related to low valuation firms, the exact opposite effect is evidenced in relation to high-performance firms.

KEYWORDS:

• CEO characteristics
• firm performance
• quantile regression
• China

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• C20
• G34
• G32

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The authors received no direct funding for this research.