Top tech leaders get higher approval ratings than many world leaders, according to Wharton study

Business Insider's Sara Silverstein spoke with Wharton School marketing professor David Reibstein at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Following is a transcript of the video.

Silverstein: Can you explain to me this survey that you recently did that ranks how people, or the approval rankings of some of the top CEOs versus some of the nation's - the world leaders.

Reibstein: So one of the things that I included in the study this year was not just, sort of a valuation of countries. But we also looked at, sort of, approval ratings of country leaders and approval ratings of the top dozen CEOs from around the world. And what was interesting is people feel better about CEOs than they do about country leaders. So if you look at all the ratings from the - I did 12 and 12 of each country leaders and corporate leaders - the top several were really those that were from corporations. So I think Eric Schmidt ...

Silverstein: Schmidt, Zuckerberg, Bezos.

Reibstein: Right, so those are those are evaluated more highly than any presidential leader.

Silverstein: And at the bottom you have Putin and Trump.

Reibstein: Putin and Trump - actually at the bottom is Trump and then Putin. That was a little bit of a surprise to me is to see that the world feels more positively towards Putin than they do towards Trump.

Silverstein: And do you think that like if Zuckerberg became a world leader or if - are they just viewed more favorably because they're CEOs. If they stepped into that world leader position and became politicians, do they - does that change the perspective or is it really who we have in those roles?

Reibstein: Actually I've always believed we should have some corporate leaders that are taking some of the political roles. Of course, that's what we have right now. And so it depends on what it is that they do once they become president. And so it's still to be determined. It is - there's no question that once you become a political leader, there's going to be different sides of every issue and you're going to have some detractors along the way more so than if you're a company and people can elect to buy your product or not buy your product. And so I think we'll see some you know probably some decline in ratings once someone becomes a president or prime minister.