CEO Financial Career and Corporate Innovation : Evidence from China

We examine the relationship of the financial expert CEOs on firm innovation. Using CEO individual-level and firm-level data across Chinese A-share market from 2008 to 2015, the Poisson model estimation shows that the financial expert CEOs have significant negative impacts on firm innovation. Financial expert CEOs cause 17.5% decrease in firm innovation level. We argue that the negative effect is due to the crowding-out effect of additional financial investments facilitated by financial expert CEOs' behavior consistency. Our paper sheds light on exploring the CEO behavioral idiosyncrasy on firm non-financial performance. Additionally, we exam this impact on innovation acquired outside