CEO health and corporate governance - 17 March 2021

About Joacim Tåg's research

Boards hire and fire CEOs based on imperfect information. Using comprehensive data on 28 cohorts in Sweden, we analyze the role of a potentially important attribute—CEO health—in corporate governance. Boards hire CEOs who are healthier than other high-skill professionals, in particular in mental health. After hiring, CEOs’ health develops similarly to a control group of executives. Health predicts turnover, measured at appointment and during tenure. These results are consistent with boards appointing CEOs with health robust enough to withstand the pressures of the job, correcting mismatches occurring at the time of appointment, and responding expediently to health shocks.

About Joacim Tåg

Joacim is Program Director and Research Fellow at the Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN) and Associate Professor (docent) at Lund University. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki and has been a Fulbright Scholar at New York University.

He works on bringing Swedish registry data to the research frontier in labor and finance. A central theme is the allocation of executives and workers across firms and/or into entrepreneurship. He also studies how ownership changes in firms affect workers, and he has done work on optimal regulation of IT, telecom, and media companies. His research is detailed in over 30 publications and working papers and has been featured in major national and international newspapers.