CEO Characteristics,External Pay Gap And R&D Investment

The 21st century is the era of knowledge economy,and the innovation ability gradually becomes the foundation for enterprises to win in the competition,if the enterprise wants to occupy a favorable position in the competition,it must increase R&D investment.After 20 years of the development,the research and development ability of listed enterprises in China has improved greatly,but compared with other developed countries,R&D investment of the listed companies in our country is still at the low level.Existing research shows that a lot of factors have an influence on the enterprise's R&D investment,CEO is the core of corporate executives,and plays an important role in the process of strategic decision-making in the enterprise,will also affect the R&D investment of the enterprise,scholars have done a lot of research on how does CEO characteristics influence R&D investment,but they have not come to the same conclusion,and most of them examine the "immediate effect"of the relationship,they did not consider some important regulatory variables,as a part of the executive motivation,The CEO's external pay gap will have an impact on R&D investment,at the same time,the impact of CEO characteristics on R&D investment will also be affected by the external pay gap.Based on the above background,this paper is conducting research,and employs Shenzhen and Shanghai A-share listed companies during 2011-2015 as the research object,firstly this paper discusses the relationship between CEO characteristics and the investment in R&D,the relationship between external pay gap and the investment in R&D,on this basis,put CEO characteristics,external pay gap and R&D investment into a model,to study how does the external pay gap influence the relationship between CEO characteristics and R&D investment,and some policy suggestions are proposed,which can help to increase the R&D investment of listed enterprises.Around the research topic of this article,this paper is divided into six parts:The first part is the introduction.This section introduces the research background and research significance of this article,including the theoretical and practical significance,introduces the main research content of this article,puts forward the research method used in this article,and further expounds the innovation of the research.The second part is the literature review.This section reviews the relevant documents of the CEO characteristics and R&D investment,and also the relevant documents about executives external pay gap,and analyze the existing literature.The third part is the theoretical foundation and the research hypothesis.This section firstly defines the basic concepts,expounds the theoretical basis of this study,including the upper echelon theory,principal-agent theory,and equity theory,and finally combined with theoretical analysis,we put forward the research hypotheses in this paper.The fourth part is research design.In this section,based on the research hypotheses of this paper,we collect samples and data,select the study variables,and establish the research model.The fifth part is the empirical test and the result analysis.First,this paper carries out descriptive statistics of the variables,then the analysis of correlation is carried out for the preliminary study,finally,the hypotheses of this paper are verified by regression analysis based on the proposed model.The sixth division is research conclusions and suggestions.Based on the relevant empirical results,this paper gives specific research conclusions and provides specific recommendations,points out the limitations of this paper,and points out the improvement direction.This paper considers six characteristics of the CEO,include the CEO's age,gender,tenure,education,professional background,and whether CEO is the chairman of the board or not,and considers the external pay gap as a moderator variable,the empirical results show that:The lower the CEO's age,the higher the R&D investment of the enterprise;There is no significant correlation between CEO's tenure,gender and R&D investment;The higher the degree of the CEO's education,the higher the R&D investment of the enterprise;When the CEO has a professional background in R&D,technology and marketing,the R&D investment is higher.When the CEO is the chairman of the board,the R&D investment is higher.The greater the CEO's external pay gap,the higher the R&D investment.The external pay gap can enhance the correlation between these CEO characteristics(age,tenure,and whether CEO is the chairman of the board or not)and R&D investment,but external pay gap does not play a regulatory role in the relationship between CEO's gender,education,professional background and the R&D investment.This paper provides some suggestions based on relevant empirical results and conclusions.The innovation of this paper is:Existing literature mostly discusses the absolute value of managers' compensation,this paper broadens the perspective and considers the relative pay gap,and studies the relationship between CEO's external pay gap and the R&D investment,and put the CEO characteristics,external compensation gap,R&D investment into a model,empirically examine external pay gap's regulatory role in the relationship between CEO's characteristics and the R&D investment.