2026
Do Higher Civil Servant Salaries Limit Corruption? Evidence from Hong Kong
New evidence from Hong Kong on how civil-service pay and credible enforcement interact to deter corruption.
Research
Evidence for the decisions that shape economies.
Research developed at IMD on finance, leadership, institutions, technology, and the forces that determine long-term competitiveness. Every published research record is listed below.
Research archive
All working papers and research.
The archive is drawn directly from the established WordPress research records and preserves a direct download or source link for each paper.
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2021
The Impact of Leaders: A Global Study on the Value of CEOs
This paper presents strong evidence that existing studies overestimate the impact of CEOs on the performance of the firms they lead. Ours is a comprehensive study of more than 3,692 CEOs in 2,103 firms in 22 countries, and for the period 1991-2019. Our objective is to assess the direct impact of CEOs on firm results---measured as Total Shareholder…
2017
Insider Trading Prior to Credit Rating Downgrades? Evidence from the European Sovereign Debt Crisis
Our paper presents strong evidence of securities lending market anticipation of sovereign bond dowgrades in Europe during the period 2008-2012. We construct a sample of bonds from 18 European countries which includes members of the Euroland; EU, non-euro members, as well as non- EU countries. We find that, in the five days preceding a downgrade to speculative grade,…
2020
Will Globalization survive Covid-19?
Globalization, already slowing before the COVID-19 pandemic, will likely take multiple hits in its wake. The pandemic and health emergency measures introduced may lead to a prolonged recession, which could be worse than the one experienced in 2009. But will the impact be strong enough to turn an already ongoing post-Global Financial Crisis (GFC) ‘slowbalization’ into outright deglobalization?
“Research should make complex choices more intelligible.”
These papers bring data and institutional context together to frame the questions facing businesses, policymakers, and communities.
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