ABSTRACT
This study examines whether firms operated by superior managers can obtain more favorable investment opportunities using data on U.S. industrial firms during 1988–2015. The empirical results disclose that there exists a positive relationship between managerial ability and investment opportunity, and that the relation is only significant in financially unconstrained firms or firms in a strong financial position. Overall, our findings support that firms having managers with superior ability could gain more economic profits via better investment opportunity. Through our research, policy makers and investors can pay more attention on managerial ability.
1. Introduction
Managerial ability has been proven to play an important determinant in tax avoidance, earnings quality, goodwill impairment, and other corporate policies. However, the relationship between investment opportunity and managerial ability has remained unclear for a long time, likely due to difficulty in measurement and other data limitations. This study focuses on how superior managerial ability affects investment opportunity for the following two reasons. First, as a crucial role in corporate finance, investment opportunity impacts a firm's capital structure, dividend policy, and future growth (Smith and Watts (1992), Kallapur and Trombley (1999)). Second, because investment opportunity is unobservable by outsiders, it would be helpful if we could link investment opportunity to other firm characteristics and managerial ability.
