Estimating the value of top managerial talent is a central topic of research that hasattracted widespread attention from academics and practitioners. Yet, studying the impact of managers on firm performance is difficult because of endogeneity and omitted variablesconcerns. We test for the impact...

This paper uses a unique dataset from Denmark to examine the impact of owners family characteristics (size, gender composition, divorce, etc) on the decision to appoint internal (family) or external chief executive officers (CEOs). In contrast to common perceptions, we find that conditional on...