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Narcissism is a bad sign: CEO signature size, investment, and performance

Using the size of CEO signatures in SEC filings to measure individual narcissism, we find that CEO narcissism is associated with several negative firm outcomes. We first validate signature size as a measure of narcissism but not overconfidence using two laboratory studies, and also find that our measure is correlated with employee perceptions of CEO narcissism used in prior research. We then use CEO signatures to study the relation between CEO narcissism and the firm’s investment policies and performance. CEO narcissism is associated with overinvestment, particularly in R&D and M&A expenditures (but not in capital expenditures). Firms led by narcissistic CEOs experience lower financial productivity in the form of profitability and operating cash flows. Despite this negative performance, narcissistic CEOs enjoy higher absolute and relative compensation. Our results are robust to several alternative specifications, including controlling for a popular options-based overconfidence measure used in prior research.