Prof. Dirk Jenter, Ph.D.

The Market for CEOs

Dirk Jenter and Peter Cziraki have studied the market for CEO s of large publicly traded US firms, analyzed new CEOs’ prior connections to the hiring firm, and explored how hiring choices are determined. Firms are hiring from a surprisingly small pool of candidates. More than 80% of new CEOs are insiders, defined as current or former employees or board members. Boards are already familiar with more than 90% of new CEOs, as they are either insiders or executives who directors have previously worked with. There are few reallocations of CEOs across firms – firms raid CEOs of other firms in only 3% of cases. Pay differences appear too small to explain these hiring choices. The evidence suggests that firm-specific human capital, asymmetric information, and other frictions have first-order effects on the assignment of CEOs to firms.

Mr. Jenter’s research focuses on corporate governance, the selection and compensation of top executives, mergers and acquisitions, and interactions of firms with investors and capital markets. During his visit, he is looking forward to meeting with research scholars at LMU and CESifo during his visit.

Dirk Jenter is a Professor of Finance at the London School of Economics and was previously a faculty member at Stanford and MIT. He is a Research Associate of CEPR, a Research Member of ECGI, and a former Research Fellow of NBER. He obtained an MPhil in Economics from the University of Cambridge and MA and PhD degrees in Business Economics from Harvard University. His work has been published in all top finance journals, and has been featured in, among others, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, and The Economist. He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Finance and has been an Associate Editor of the Review of Financial Studies.