Public Listing, Managerial Short-termism, and Brand Development

While product and company reputation are among the most valued intangible assets, we have little understanding of when and why managers focus on such resources. This shortcoming has limited both the resource-based and attention-based views of the firm. We construct a novel and comprehensive dataset of trademarks owned by big privately held and publicly listed firms in the U.S. over three decades to examine whether and how public listing status influences brand development. Doing so allows us to understand how the ownership environment shapes managerial attention. We find that while publicly listed firms register more new trademarks compared with their privately held counterparts, their new trademarks are less likely renewed. A variety of empirical tests help us attribute these patterns to managerial short-termism.