The puzzle of left-handedness: Evidence from corporate innovation

IF 4.3 2区经济学 Q1 BUSINESS, FINANCE

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance Pub Date : 2025-04-18 DOI:10.1016/j.jbef.2025.101053

Long Chen , June Woo Park , Albert Tsang , Xiaofang Xu

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Left-handers represent a notable portion of the global population, yet their characteristics remain somewhat enigmatic. One key question is whether they are inherently more creative than their non-left-handed counterparts. Our study addresses this question by examining how firm innovation varies with the handedness of their CEOs. Using a novel sample of left-handed CEOs, we find that they tend to have greater innovation success than their counterparts. Using forced turnover as an exogenous shock, we conduct a CEO handedness change analysis and find that firms transitioning from a right-handed to a left-handed CEO tend to have more patents and citations, but not vice versa. We also identify a possible mechanism for this effect: left-handed CEOs tend to hire more immigrant inventors or serve as inventors themselves, which likely enhances the firm’s innovation output. Overall, our study highlights CEO handedness as an observable personal characteristic that could serve as a predictor of a firm’ creativity.

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左撇子之谜：来自企业创新的证据

左撇子占全球人口的很大一部分，但他们的特征仍然有些神秘。一个关键问题是，他们是否天生就比非左撇子更有创造力。我们的研究通过考察企业创新如何随着ceo的惯用手而变化来解决这个问题。通过对左撇子ceo的新样本研究，我们发现他们往往比他们的同行在创新方面取得了更大的成功。利用强迫离职作为外生冲击，我们进行了CEO惯用手性变化分析，发现从右撇子CEO转变为左撇子CEO的企业往往拥有更多的专利和引用，反之则不然。我们还确定了这种效应的可能机制：左撇子ceo倾向于雇佣更多的移民发明家或自己担任发明家，这可能会提高公司的创新产出。总的来说，我们的研究强调CEO惯用手是一种可观察到的个人特征，可以作为公司创造力的预测指标。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance BUSINESS, FINANCE-

CiteScore

13.20

自引率

6.10%

发文量

审稿时长

69 days

期刊介绍： Behavioral and Experimental Finance represent lenses and approaches through which we can view financial decision-making. The aim of the journal is to publish high quality research in all fields of finance, where such research is carried out with a behavioral perspective and / or is carried out via experimental methods. It is open to but not limited to papers which cover investigations of biases, the role of various neurological markers in financial decision making, national and organizational culture as it impacts financial decision making, sentiment and asset pricing, the design and implementation of experiments to investigate financial decision making and trading, methodological experiments, and natural experiments. Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance welcomes full-length and short letter papers in the area of behavioral finance and experimental finance. The focus is on rapid dissemination of high-impact research in these areas.