Paola Sapienza

Paola Sapienza is the J-P Conte Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a finance professor emerita at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Her research spans corporate governance, financial development, political economy and the economic effects of culture.

Sapienza worked with Luigi Guiso and Luigi Zingales on research comparing companies’ advertised values with employees’ perceptions of management integrity. The researchers found no significant relationship between proclaimed values and the performance measures they examined, while perceived trustworthiness and ethics were positively associated with several outcomes. For leaders, the study draws a useful distinction between a public commitment and employees’ experience of management conduct. Its correlations do not show that a specific intervention will produce better results.