Impact of CEO Characteristics on Enterprise R&D Expenditure: Empirical Evidence Coming from Small and Medium Listed Companies in China

The research tries to investigate the relationship between CEO characteristics and R&D activities. Making small and medium-sized listed companies in China as sample, using OLS analysis method, we make an empirical analysis on the relationship between CEO characteristics and R&D spending. Research results show that R&D spending is significantly and positively correlated with CEO shareholding, indicating that CEO shareholding help company to conduct R & D activity, CEO duality and R&D spending is negatively correlated, which indicate that CEO duality make CEO to seek personal interests and do harm to R&D, CEO tenure and R & D spending is significantly and negatively correlated, indicating that the longer the CEO tenure is, the more reluctant to carry out R&D, CEO education level is positively correlated with R&D spending, indicating that the higher the education level of CEO, the more R & D expenditure, shareholding has different influence on R&D under the condition of different ages and different tenure, old CEO who hold company share is willing to carry out R&D activity, CEO whose tenure is longer and holding company share is inclined to R&D activity.