Managing the Family Firm: Evidence from CEOs at Work

Abstract

We build a comparable and bottom-up measure of CEO labor supply for 1,114 CEOs, and investigate whether family and professional CEOs differ on this dimension of effort. Family CEOs work 9% fewer hours relative to professional CEOs. CEO hours worked are positively correlated with firm performance, and account for 18% of the performance gap between family and professional CEOs. We study the sources of the differences in labor supply across family and professional CEOs by exploiting firm and industry heterogeneity, and variation in meteorological and sport events. The evidence suggests that family CEOs value–or can pursue–leisure activities more than professional CEOs.