Executive compensation is still at the forefront of not only academic research, but also policy initiatives, news stories, and nationwide discussions. Much of the intensity of the discussion has been caused by the steep increase in executive pay, especially over the 1990s when total realized CEO...

Stock Option Programs (SOPs) have become the dominant compensation instrument for top-management in the nineties. Usually, they are not dividend protected, i.e. any dividend payout decreases the value of a manager's options. Empirical evidence shows that this results in a significant decrease in...