We show that top management incentives vary by responsibility. For oversight executives, pay-performance incentives are $1.22 per thousand dollar increase in shareholder wealth higher than for divisional executives. For CEOs, incentives are $5.65 higher than for divisional executives. Incentives...

Empirical research on the principal-agent model has focused almost exclusively on the incentives provided to chief executive officers. However, the model is also directly relevant to the incentives provided to other top executives. Furthermore, the extent to which other executives will be...

We argue that strategic interactions between firms in an oligopoly can explain the puzzling lack of high-powered incentives in executive compensation contracts written by shareholders whose objective is to maximize the value of their shares. We derive the optimal compensation contracts for...