Does top management Team's academic experience promote corporate innovation? Evidence from China

This study investigates whether top management teams' academic experience affects corporate innovation, using manually-collected data on Chinese firms from the period of 2008-2017. The results indicate that academic experience has a strong positive effect on corporate innovation. The positive effect of academic experience on corporate innovation is more pronounced, when firms grow faster or are non-state-owned. By exploring the transmission channels, the results generally show that academic experience influences corporate innovation by improving internal controls and reducing the degree of information asymmetry. These findings are among the first empirical evidence of the association between academic experience of top management teams and corporate innovation.