| CEO characteristics |
| TFE | Total frontier experience, defined as the duration of the frontier experience at the county of CEO birthplace. Source: Bazzi et al. (2020) |
| CEO age | Age of the CEO. |
| CEO tenure | Tenure of the CEO, calculated as the number of years as a firm CEO plus one. Source: Execucomp |
| CEO education | The highest degree earned by the CEO: 3 for Doctoral degree, 2 for Master’s degree, 1 for Bachelor’s degree and 0 otherwise. Source: BoardEx |
| Ivy League degree | An indicator variable equals to one if the CEO attended an Ivy League school. Source: BoardEx |
| CEO overconfidence | An indicator variable equal to one for all years when the CEO’s options exceed 67% moneyness and zero otherwise, as defined in Hirshleifer et al. (2012) and Islam and Zein (2020). The total value per option of the in-the-money options is obtained by dividing the value of all unexercised exercisable options by the number of options in Execucomp. Next I divide this value per option by the price at the end of the fiscal years in Compustat |
| CEO compensation | Total annual CEO compensation (TDC1). Source: Execucomp |
| Delta | The dollar change in a CEO’s stock and options portfolio with a 1% change in stock price following Coles et al. (2006). Source: Execucomp and CRSP. |
| Vega | The dollar change in a CEO’s option holdings with a 1% change in stock return volatility following Coles et al. (2006). Source: Execucomp and CRSP. |
| Founder CEO | An indicator variable that equals 1 if the CEO is the founder of the firm. Source: Lee et al. (2017) |
| General ability index (GAI) | The GAI developed by Custódio et al. (2019) |
| Hofstede individualism | Hofstede individualism index constructed following Liu (2016) and Pan et al. (2017) |
| Hofstede uncertainty avoidance | Hofstede UAI, constructed following Liu (2016) and Pan et al. (2017) |
| CEO network | Network size of selected individual (number of overlaps through employment, other activities and education). Source: BoardEx |
| Inventor CEO | An indicator variable equal to one if the CEO is an inventor, defined following Islam and Zein (2020) |
| Inventor variables |
| Net inflow of top inventors | Logarithm of one plus the number of top inventors minus the logarithm of the number of top 10% or 5% cited inventors in the previous year. Source: USPTO |
| Patent variables |
| Number of patents | Total number of patents that a firm files in a year (Kogan et al., 2017) |
| Number of citations | Total number of patent citations that a firm receives in a year (Kogan et al., 2017) |
| Number of adjusted citations | Total number of patent citations that a firm receives in a year, scaled by year-class average (Kogan et al., 2017) |
| Real (nominal) market value of patents | Real (nominal) market value of all patents a firm files in a year (Kogan et al., 2017) |
| Top 1%, 5% or 10% innovation | The number of top 1%, 5% or 10% cited patents that a firm files in a year (Kogan et al., 2017) |
| Management team quality |
| Team size | The size of the firm’s top management team. The team is defined as managers with the title of vice president or higher (BoardEx) |
| Team MBA | Fraction of the management team with an MBA degree (BoardEx) |
| Team PhD | Fraction of the management team with a PhD degree (BoardEx) |
| Team network size | The average number of connections of the management team (BoardEx) |
| Team experience | The fraction of the management team that served in top management prior to joining the current firm (BoardEx) |
| Team average tenure | The average tenure of the management team (BoardEx) |
| Firm characteristics |
| Firm size | The logarithm of the book value of total assets (Compustat) |
| Firm age | The number years the firm exists in Compustat |
| R&D expenditures | The ratio of R&D expenses (XRD) to net sales (SALE); set to 0 when XRD items is missing (Compustat) |
| Capital expenditures | The ratio of capital expenditures to total assets (Compustat) |
| Log employees | Logarithm of the number of firm employees in thousands (Compustat) |
| Leverage | The ratio of debt (DLTT + DLC) to total assets (AT) (Compustat) |
| Profitability | Return on assets (OIBDP/AT) (Compustat) |
| Overall firm rating | Overall firm rating from Glassdoor.com |
| CEO approval rating | Rating of CEO from Glassdoor.com |
| Work-life-balance rating | Rating for work-life-balance from Glassdoor.com |
| Compensation and benefits rating | Rating for compensation and benefits from Glassdoor.com |
| Career opportunity rating | Rating for career opportunity from Glassdoor.com |
| Tech job positions | Number of tech jobs (Bloom et al., 2021) |
| Stock return volatility | Daily stock return volatility in a year (CRSP) |
| Idiosyncratic volatility | Daily idiosyncratic stock return volatility in a year estimated using Fama-French-Carhart factors (CRSP) |
| Number of announced M&A deals | Number of announced M&A deals (SDC M&As) |
| Number of completed M&A deals | Number of completed M&A deals (SDC M&As) |
| Employee quality monitoring | A score between 0 and 1, which measures whether the company monitors the performance on employment quality. Source: Refinitiv Asset4 |