Assistant Professor, School of Accounting and Finance, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Yangyang Chen's CV

Prior research predicts that sunny weather is associated with creativity, optimism, and risk-taking. In this paper, we examine the effect of weather-induced mood on inventors’ productivity and the value implication of such an effect. We document that inventors exposed to more sunshine create patents with higher market valuation and forward citations. Our results hold after addressing alternative explanations and conducting exhaustive robustness tests. Furthermore, we show that inventors exposed to more sunshine engage in greater specialization than experimentation. Our paper is among the first to show that weather conditions have a real effect on firm value through the innovation channel.