Does Owning a Corporate Jet Make Sense?

The company owns a corporate jet to fly the CEO and other top executives to meetings around the globe.  Does it make sense financially, or is it one of those corporate perks that should be abolished?  New research by NYU Professor David Yermack suggests that shareholders should think twice about investing in a company with its own jet, or even worse, its own fleet of jets.   Yermack's latest study, published in the Journal of Financial Economics shows that, "Average shareholder returns underperform market benchmarks by more than 4% annually, a severe gap far exceeding the costs of resources consumed."   4% is a significant number.   What's going on there?  Of course, many explanations exist for why this underperformance might exist.   One interesting tidbit in the study... companies with jets also tend to have CEOs with long-distance golf club memberships.   I'll let my readers noodle over that interesting finding for a moment.