IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/15918.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Leadership: A Personnel Economics Approach

Author

Listed:
  • Edward P. Lazear

Abstract

A theory of leadership is proposed and tested. Leaders are characterized as those who have the ability to choose the right direction more frequently than their peers. The theory implies that leaders tend to be more able, place themselves in visible decision making situations more frequently, and are generalists. Also, the most able leaders should be found in the highest variance industries, where decision making has the greatest payoff. The theory is tested using data on Stanford business school alumni and is confirmed. Leaders are generalists rather than specialists, both innately and in their pattern of skill acquisition.

Suggested Citation

  • Edward P. Lazear, 2010. "Leadership: A Personnel Economics Approach," NBER Working Papers 15918, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:15918
    Note: IO LS PR
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w15918.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Steffen Huck & Pedro Rey-Biel, 2006. "Endogenous Leadership in Teams," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 162(2), pages 253-261, June.
    2. Fredrik Andersson & Matthew Freedman & John Haltiwanger & Julia Lane & Kathryn Shaw, 2009. "Reaching for the Stars: Who Pays for Talent in Innovative Industries?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(538), pages 308-332, June.
    3. Baumol, William J., 1996. "Entrepreneurship: Productive, unproductive, and destructive," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 3-22, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Dora L. Costa, 2014. "Leaders: Privilege, Sacrifice, Opportunity, and Personnel Economics in the American Civil War," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 30(3), pages 437-462.
    2. Kvaløy, Ola & Schöttner, Anja, 2015. "Incentives to motivate," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 26-42.
    3. Atolia Manoj & Kurokawa Yoshinori, 2021. "Entry Costs, Task Variety, and Skill Flexibility: A Simple Theory of (Top) Income Skewness," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 21(1), pages 97-124, January.
    4. Constant, Amelie F. & Tien, Bienvenue N., 2010. "African Leaders: Their Education Abroad and FDI Flows," IZA Discussion Papers 5353, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Ljungqvist, Alexander & Raff, Konrad, 2017. "Busy Directors: Strategic Interaction and Monitoring Synergies," CEPR Discussion Papers 12361, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    6. Giovanna d’Adda, 2012. "Leadership and influence: Evidence from an artefactual field experiment on local public good provision," ECON - Working Papers 059, Department of Economics - University of Zurich.
    7. Kim, Jaesoo, 2012. "Endogenous leadership in incentive contracts," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 82(1), pages 256-266.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lazear, Edward P., 2012. "Leadership: A personnel economics approach," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 92-101.
    2. Marceau, Nicolas & Mongrain, Steeve, 2011. "Competition in law enforcement and capital allocation," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 136-147, January.
    3. Makowsky, Michael D. & Wang, Siyu, 2018. "Embezzlement, whistleblowing, and organizational architecture: An experimental investigation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 58-75.
    4. Isabel Grilo & Roy Thurik, 2008. "Determinants of entrepreneurial engagement levels in Europe and the US," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 17(6), pages 1113-1145, December.
    5. Michael Adusei, 2016. "Does Entrepreneurship Promote Economic Growth in Africa?," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 28(2), pages 201-214, June.
    6. Henrekson, Magnus & Johansson, Dan, 2010. "Firm Growth, Institutions and Structural Transformation," Ratio Working Papers 150, The Ratio Institute.
    7. Anders Gustafsson, 2019. "Busy doing nothing: why politicians implement inefficient policies," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 30(3), pages 282-299, September.
    8. Rakesh Sambharya & Martina Musteen, 2014. "Institutional environment and entrepreneurship: An empirical study across countries," Journal of International Entrepreneurship, Springer, vol. 12(4), pages 314-330, December.
    9. Anthony J. Evans, 2016. "The unintended consequences of easy money: How access to finance impedes entrepreneurship," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 29(3), pages 233-252, September.
    10. Wim Naudé, 2016. "Is European Entrepreneurship in Crisis?," ifo DICE Report, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 14(03), pages 03-07, October.
    11. Hartwell, Christopher A., 2014. "The impact of institutional volatility on financial volatility in transition economies : a GARCH family approach," BOFIT Discussion Papers 6/2014, Bank of Finland, Institute for Economies in Transition.
    12. Alvaro Montenegro García, 2007. "Fundamentos de la política de la competencia," Documentos de Economía 3930, Universidad Javeriana - Bogotá.
    13. Richard Hunt & Lauren Ortiz-Hunt, 2018. "Deinstitutionalization through Business Model Evolution: Women Entrepreneurs in the Middle East and North Africa," Chapters, in: Ladislav Mura (ed.), Entrepreneurship - Development Tendencies and Empirical Approach, IntechOpen.
    14. R. Sandra Schillo & Ajax Persaud & Meng Jin, 2016. "Entrepreneurial readiness in the context of national systems of entrepreneurship," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 46(4), pages 619-637, April.
    15. Boubaker, Sabri & Liu, Pei-Zhi & Ren, Yi-Shuai & Ma, Chao-Qun, 2024. "Do anti-corruption campaigns affect corporate environmental responsibility? Evidence from China," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    16. Delgado, Michael S. & McCloud, Nadine & Kumbhakar, Subal C., 2014. "A generalized empirical model of corruption, foreign direct investment, and growth," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 298-316.
    17. Castaño, María-Soledad & Méndez, María-Teresa & Galindo, Miguel-Ángel, 2015. "The effect of social, cultural, and economic factors on entrepreneurship," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 68(7), pages 1496-1500.
    18. José Neves Cruz, 2013. "Is white-collar crime a form of entrepreneurship?," OBEGEF Working Papers 022, OBEGEF - Observatório de Economia e Gestão de Fraude;OBEGEF Working Papers on Fraud and Corruption.
    19. Adu-Gyamfi, Richard & Kuada, John & Asongu, Simplice, 2018. "An Integrative Framework for Entrepreneurship Research in Africa," MPRA Paper 89133, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Michael Stuetzer & David B. Audretsch & Martin Obschonka & Samuel D. Gosling & Peter J. Rentfrow & Jeff Potter, 2018. "Entrepreneurship culture, knowledge spillovers and the growth of regions," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 52(5), pages 608-618, May.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J0 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:15918. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.