[en] We apply insights from research in social psychology and labor economics to the domain of entrepreneurial finance and investigate how founder chief executive officers' (founder CEOs') facial attractiveness influences firm valuation. Leveraging the novel context of initial coin offerings (ICOs), we document a pronounced founder CEO beauty premium, with a positive relationship between founder CEO attractiveness and firm valuation. We find only very limited evidence of stereotype-based evaluations, through the association of founder CEO attractiveness with latent traits such as competence, intelligence, likeability, or trustworthiness. Rather, attractiveness seems to bear economic value per se, especially in a context in which investors base their decisions on a limited information set. Indeed, attractiveness has a sustainable effect on post-ICO performance.
Disciplines :
Strategy & innovation
Author, co-author :
Colombo, Massimo
FISCH, Christian ; University of Luxembourg > Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SNT) > Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and New Technology (EINT)
Momtaz, Paul
Vismara, Silvio
External co-authors :
yes
Language :
English
Title :
The CEO beauty premium: Founder CEO attractiveness and firm valuation in initial coin offerings
Publication date :
2022
Journal title :
Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal
ISSN :
1932-4391
eISSN :
1932-443X
Publisher :
John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, United States - New Jersey
