The value of director reputation: evidence from outside director appointments

This study examines the role of director reputation using a sample of outside director appointments. Relative to existing literature, we focus on outside director appointments involving CEO award winners. Exploiting the award-induced change in a director's reputation, we are able to show that investors react more positively to the appointment of outside directors they perceive as more reputable. We find that this 'reputation premium' is approximately 2%, and robust across a range of subtests that control for a wide range of possibly confounding influences.