中文摘要
本文表明，CEO 的信任提升了企业内部的创新，为广为人知的信任—增长关系提供了一个新的微观基础。我构建了一个新的 CEO—企业—专利匹配数据集，涵盖 2000—2011 年间美国 3,598 家上市公司的 5,753 名 CEO 与 700,000 项专利。我利用 CEO 族裔来源之间在普遍信任上的差异，这一族裔来源是借助去匿名化的历史人口普查、根据其姓氏推断得出的。在 CEO 更替之后，CEO 的普遍信任每增加一个标准差，与未来专利数量增加 6%、平均专利质量提高 4%–6% 相关，且这一效应完全由更高质量的专利驱动。对员工评论的文本分析表明，CEO 的信任增强了企业的信任文化。这些结果与定性访谈得出的见解一致，即 CEO 的信任与企业的信任文化鼓励研究人员从事高风险的探索性研究与开发。此外，在控制 CEO 及其他固定效应后，CEO 对不同国家发明人的双边信任变化，对发明人的专利产出具有相近的影响。
Abstract
Abstract This article shows that a CEO’s trust enhances innovation within a firm, providing a novel micro-foundation for the well-known trust-growth relationship. I build a new matched CEO-firm-patent data set covering 5,753 CEOs in 3,598 U.S. public firms and 700,000 patents during 2000–2011. I exploit variation in generalized trust across CEO ethnic origins, inferred from their last names using deanonymized historical censuses. Following CEO turnovers, a one standard deviation increase in a CEO’s generalized trust is associated with 6% more future patents and 4%–6% higher average patent quality, driven entirely by higher-quality patents. Text analysis of employee reviews shows that the CEO’s trust enhances a firm’s trust culture. These results are consistent with insights from qualitative interviews suggesting that the CEO's trust and the firm’s trust culture encourage researchers to undertake high-risk explorative research and development. In addition, changes in the CEO’s bilateral trust toward inventors in different countries have comparable effects on inventors’ patenting, controlling for CEO and other fixed effects.