Abstract

Top executives with business decision-making power, including CEO, CFO and COO, are the core of a company’s business activities, their business decisions influenced by their own abilities will naturally affect the company performance. As an expected proxy of executive’s ability, this paper focuses on the executive’s education, and studies the impact of executive’s education on the performance of REITs by using the data of executive’s education and financial performance of 288 U.S. REITs companies from 2000 to 2018. As for the results of the empirical examinations, this paper finds that, first, there is no significant relationship between executive’s individual education and the performance of REITs. However, executive’s high individual education has a significantly negative impact on the performance of REITs if there is enough discretionary cash. Second, as for the executive team of CEO and CFO, there is a significantly positive impact of the education of executive team in which CEO has no high education and CFO has high education on the performance of REITs. Finally, as for the executive team of CEO, CFO and COO, there is a significantly positive impact of the education of executive team in which CEO has no high education and at least one of CFO and COO has high education on the performance of REITs, and the best executive team with greater positive impact on the performance of REITs is the one in which CEO has no high education and one of CFO and COO has high education.