Academics in charge make companies better off, Bank of Finland paper finds

Companies with directors from academia are associated with higher performance, according to a Bank of Finland discussion paper, which also finds that academic directors play an important governance role through their advising and monitoring functions.

Professors in the boardroom and their impact on corporate governance and firm performance by Bill Francis, Iftekhar Hasan and Qiang Wu notes that "directors from academia" served on the boards of around 40% of S&P 1,500 firms between 1998 and 2011