Publicly traded firms in the U.S. typically determine C.E.O. compensation by benchmarking the pay of their C.E.O.s against the pay of C.E.O.s in “peer” firms. The naming of particular peer companies by individual firms constitutes a supra-firm relational structure (network) in which an...

This chapter concerns itself with the development of a regression model for determining the executive compensation of the AT&T CEO. The data observations for this model consist of a list of 21 comparable companies selected by the compensation committee of AT&T, its institutional investors, and...

We document that firms whose compensation peers experience weak say on pay votes reduce CEO compensation following those votes. Reductions reflect proxy adviser concerns about peers' compensation contracts and are stronger when CEOs receive excess compensation, when they compete more closely...