“…Firms at early stages of their life cycle (such as newly public firms) are characterized by small networks and limited geographic scope (Garcia and Norli, 2012;Cornaggia et al, 2020). Given that the labor market for executives is geographically segmented (Yonker, 2016), IPO firms are subject to more local labor market frictions when searching for outside CEO candidates, relative to their mature counterparts.…”