Bank CEO Pay-Performance Relations and the Effects of Deregulation

We test the deregulation hypothesis which posits that bank CEO compensation became more sensitive to performance as bank management became less regulated. We observe a significant increase in pay-performance sensitivities from our 1976-1981 regulation subsample to our 1982-1988 deregulation subsample. These increases in pay sensitivities after deregulation are observed for salary and bonus, stock options, and common stock holdings. We observe increases in the pay-performance relation associated with high capitalization ratio banks consistent with providing incentives for wealth creation while even larger increases in pay-performance sensitivity for lower-capitalization-ratio banks suggests an FDIC moral hazard problem