How a new venture improves performance when facing both principal and agency problems is an important yet understudied question. This study examines the effectiveness of CEO duality in mitigating the principal problem and enhancing entrepreneurial success. By granting more power to CEOs, CEO duality can alleviate the principal problem; however, CEO duality may simultaneously exacerbate CEOs' agency problems. Using manually collected panel data on 1403 newly established U.S. commercial banks, we find a positive relationship between CEO duality and new venture performance. The CEO duality–new venture performance relationship strengthens when CEOs are also founders of their firms and weakens when the share of corporate ownership reflects heavy investment by incumbent firms. Our findings highlight that venture governance needs to address principal and agency problems simultaneously.

中文翻译：

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风险治理、首席执行官双重性和新风险投资绩效

新企业在面临委托人和代理问题时如何提高绩效是一个重要但尚未得到充分研究的问题。本研究探讨了首席执行官双重性在缓解主要问题和提高创业成功方面的有效性。通过赋予CEO更多权力，CEO双重性可以缓解主要问题；然而，CEO的双重性可能同时加剧CEO的代理问题。通过手动收集 1403 家新成立的美国商业银行的面板数据，我们发现 CEO 双重性与新创企业绩效之间存在正相关关系。当首席执行官同时也是公司创始人时，首席执行官二元性与新创企业绩效关系会加强；而当公司所有权份额反映现有公司的大量投资时，首席执行官二元性与新创企业绩效关系会减弱。我们的研究结果强调，风险治理需要同时解决委托人和代理问题。