NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Suggestions for further reading:

Tom Neff and Jim Citrin describe strategies for new CEOs in "You're in Charge--Now What?"

David Nadler is co-author of "Building Better Boards: A Blueprint for Effective Governance"

Robert Kaplan and David Norton have written several books on their "balanced scorecard" concept, most recently "Alignment: Using the Balanced Scorecard to Create Corporate Synergies"

Alfred Rappaport has an article on "Ten Ways to Create Shareholder Value" in the Sept. 2006 Harvard Business Review.

The 1972 study that found CEOs to have little impact was Stanley Lieberson and James O'Connor, "Leadership and Organizational Performance: A Study of Large Corporations," American Sociological Review, April 1972.

The Malmendier-Tate paper, titled "Superstar CEOs," is available here.

The study on productivity at auto manufacturers is Marvin B. Lieberman, Laurence J. Lau and Mark D. Williams, "Firm-Level Productivity and Management Influence: A Comparison of U.S. and Japanese Automobile Producers," Management Science, Oct. 1990.

Chapter Eight of Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton's new book, "Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management," provides an excellent summary of academic research on the impact of CEOs on corporate performance.

Two interesting recent papers on the topic available online are "The Good, The Bad, and the Lucky: CEO Pay and Skill," by Robert Daines, Vinay B. Nair, and Lewis Kornhauser, and "How Much Do CEOs Influence Firm Performance - Really?" by Alison Mackey.