Compensation schemes have been blamed for encouraging excess risk-taking on the part of managers within the financial system and real economy. In general, compensation cannot decrease below the base salary, while gains from bonuses can be limitless. The potential link between compensation and...

Two alternative relative compensation schemes are compared with respect to total output that can be generated at a given sum of salaries. While the promotion regime guarantees that any salary increase is permanent, the premium system allows a reduction in the income of an agent to the base...

Using the National Compensation Survey between 2004-2017, we document three stylized facts and quantify cyclical heterogeneity among performance pay and fixed wage jobs. First, there is substantial dispersion in the incidence of performance pay, even within the same occupation; hourly...