The DOI matches its Crossref record; 25 of the 25 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Superstar CEOs*
Open accessAbstract
Compensation, status, and press coverage of managers in the United States follow a highly skewed distribution: a small number of “superstars” enjoy the bulk of the rewards. We evaluate the impact of CEOs achieving superstar status on the performance of their firms, using prestigious business awards to measure shocks to CEO status. We find that award-winning CEOs subsequently underperform, both relative to their prior performance and relative to a matched sample of non-winning CEOs. At the same time, they extract more compensation following the awards, both in absolute amounts and relative to other top executives in their firms. They also spend more time on public and private activities outside their companies, such as assuming board seats or writing books. The incidence of earnings management increases after winning awards. The effects are strongest in firms with weak corporate governance. Our results suggest that the ex post consequences of media-induced superstar status for shareholders are negative.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Common risk factors in the returns on stocks and bonds
Fama, E. F., & French, K. R. (1993) · Journal of Financial Economics · doi:10.1016/0304-405x(93)90023-5 · Cited by 25,754
On Persistence in Mutual Fund Performance
Carhart, M. M. (1997) · The Journal of Finance · doi:10.1111/j.1540-6261.1997.tb03808.x · Cited by 17,283
Does the Stock Market Overreact?
De BONDT, W. F. M., & THALER, R. (1985) · The Journal of Finance · doi:10.1111/j.1540-6261.1985.tb05004.x · Cited by 7,578
Rank-Order Tournaments as Optimum Labor Contracts
Lazear, E. P., & Rosen, S. (1981) · Journal of Political Economy · doi:10.1086/261010 · Cited by 4,560
Theory of the firm; managerial Behavior, Agency Costs, and Ownership Structure
Jensen, M. C., & Meckling, W. H. (1996) · Firms, Organizations and Contracts · doi:10.1093/oso/9780198774358.003.0006 · Cited by 4,245
Managing with Style: The Effect of Managers on Firm Policies
Bertrand, M., & Schoar, A. (2003) · The Quarterly Journal of Economics · doi:10.1162/003355303322552775 · Cited by 3,894
The Central Role of the Propensity Score in Observational Studies for Causal Effects
Rosenbaum, P. R., & Rubin, D. B. (1983) · Biometrika · doi:10.2307/2335942 · Cited by 3,261
Permanent and Temporary Components of Stock Prices
Fama, E. F., & French, K. R. (1988) · Journal of Political Economy · doi:10.1086/261535 · Cited by 3,025
Earnings Management to Exceed Thresholds
Degeorge, F., Patel, J., & Zeckhauser, R. (1999) · The Journal of Business · doi:10.1086/209601 · Cited by 2,751
Executive compensation as an agency problem
Bebchuk, L. A., & Fried, J. M. (2009) · The Economic Nature of the Firm · doi:10.1017/cbo9780511817410.026 · Cited by 2,282
Cited by
Syverson, C. (2011) · Journal of Economic Literature · doi:10.1257/jel.49.2.326 · Cited by 2,942
Bebchuk, L. A., Cremers, K. J. M., & Peyer, U. C. (2011) · Journal of Financial Economics · doi:10.1016/j.jfineco.2011.05.006 · Cited by 993
Generalists versus specialists: Lifetime work experience and chief executive officer pay
Custódio, C., Ferreira, M. A., & Matos, P. (2013) · Journal of Financial Economics · doi:10.1016/j.jfineco.2013.01.001 · Cited by 745
CEO network centrality and merger performance
El-Khatib, R., Fogel, K., & Jandik, T. (2015) · Journal of Financial Economics · doi:10.1016/j.jfineco.2015.01.001 · Cited by 585
CEO Sociopolitical Activism: A Stakeholder Alignment Model
Hambrick, D. C., & Wowak, A. J. (2021) · Academy of Management Review · doi:10.5465/amr.2018.0084 · Cited by 322
Metadata
- Authors
- Malmendier, U., & Tate, G.
- Venue
- Quarterly Journal of Economics
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2009-11
- Volume
- 124
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 1593-1638
- ISSN
- 0033-5533 (ISSN-L)
- 1531-4650
- OpenAlex
- W4240193059
- Cited by
- 676
- References
- 25
- FWCI
- 74.18
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Superstar CEOs*. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1162/qjec.2009.124.4.1593
- The paper
- Malmendier, U., & Tate, G. (2009). Superstar CEOs*. Quarterly Journal of Economics. https://doi.org/10.1162/qjec.2009.124.4.1593
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.