We study whether and how politicians can influence the behaviour of CEOs and firm performance with prestigious government awards. We present a simple model to develop the hypothesis that government awards have a negative effect on firm performance. The empirical analysis uses two legal...

Governments worldwide bestow orders of merit upon their citizens as a recognition of distinguished service. In this paper, I study if orders of merit can function as an external form of perquisite through which the government can supplement the compensation given by a publicly listed firm to the...