CEOs born into poor families outperform those born into wealthy families without higher risk-taking

From Playground to Boardroom: Endowed Social Status and Managerial Performance. Fangfang Du. Arizona State University Working Paper, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3040322

Abstract: By matching a CEO's place of residence in his or her formative years with U.S. Census survey data, I obtain an estimate of the CEO's family wealth and study the link between the CEO's endowed social status and firm performance. I find that CEOs born into poor families outperform those born into wealthy families, as measured by a variety of proxies for firm performance. There is no evidence of higher risk-taking by the CEOs from low social status backgrounds. Further, CEOs from poor families are better able to preserve the firm's human capital during periods of financial distress and demonstrate greater ability to develop successful innovation. As a result, such CEOs perform better in firms with high R&D spending.