The Handwriting is on Wall Street: CEO Scribbling Significance?
Business analysts struggle to find reliable ways to make any sense of the great business mystery: Which business will thrive, and which wither? This new study, perhaps as reliable as most business indicators, looks at the size of the chief executive’s handwriting:I believe I shall have that last line tattooed on my massively non-redistributionist bicep.
“Narcissism is a Bad Sign: CEO Signature Size, Investment, and Performance,” Charles Ham, Nicholas Seybert [pictured here] and Sean Wang, March 19, 2013, UNC Kenan-Flagler Research Paper No. 2013-1. The authors explain:
“Using the size of the CEO signature on annual SEC filings to measure CEO narcissism, we find that narcissism is positively associated with several measures of firm overinvestment, yet lower patent count and patent citation frequency. Abnormally high investment by narcissists predicts lower future revenues and lower sales growth....MORE
