We study S&P 500 firms’ disclosure of relative performance evaluation (RPE) details in their first proxy statement filing after the effective date of an SEC rule mandating expanded executive compensation disclosures. Using theoretically-developed implicit techniques to detect RPE use, we...

This paper examines how changes in CEO risk-taking incentives are associated with changes in the use of relative performance evaluation (RPE) in CEO contracts. Using a shock to the accounting for executive stock options (FAS 123R), I confirm that risk-taking incentives and option grants declined...

We examine a setting in which managers have differential career concerns and firm performance is publicly observed using disaggregated measures that are incrementally informative but costly to contract upon. In such a setting, when do firms contract on aggregated rather than disaggregated...

In this paper, the principal rewards an agent's farsighted effort both in the short- and long-term, with the short-term reward based on a noisy, forward-looking performance measure and the long-term reward based on a potentially less noisy, trailing performance measure. The main result is that...

We model relative performance evaluation (RPE) when a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) has the power to opportunistically influence the design of RPE by choosing the weight on an index-based peer group or by customizing the selection of peers comprising a peer group. A powerful CEO compares the...