Understanding CEO compensation plans is a continuing challenge for directors and investors. The disclosure of these plans is dictated by SEC rules that rely heavily on the “fair value” of awards at the time they are granted. The problem with these numbers is that they are static and do not...

This paper investigates whether observed executive compensation contracts are designed to provide risk-taking incentives in addition to effort incentives. We develop a stylized principal-agent model that captures the interdependence between firm risk and managerial incentives. We calibrate the...

Equity pay has been the primary component of managerial compensation packages at US public firms since the early 1990s. Using a comprehensive sample of top executives from 1992-2020, we estimate to what extent they trade firm equity held in their portfolios to neutralize increments in ownership...

This paper studies the effect of deregulation and increased product market competition on the compensation packages that firms offer to their executives. We use a panel of US executives in the nineties and exploit the deregulation episodes in the banking and financial sectors as quasi-natural...

We develop a multiperiod framework to evaluate the incentive effects of executive stock options (ESOs). For a given increase in the grant-date firm stock price (and a concurrent increase in return volatility), the increment of total value at the vesting date acts as a proxy for the incentive...

Many corporations reward their outside directors with a modest fee for each board meeting they attend. Using two non-overlapping data sets on director attendance behavior, we provide robust evidence that directors are less likely to have attendance problems at board meetings when board meeting...

Despite the many undesirable outcomes of corporate misconduct, scholars have an inadequate understanding of corporate misconduct's causes and mechanisms. We extend the behavioral theory of the firm, which traditionally assumes away the possibility of firm impropriety, to develop hypotheses...

This paper examines the consequences of the increased use of performance vesting provisions in long-term incentive compensation for CEOs and other executives in the post-2006 period following FAS 123R. We re-examine the agency prediction that incentives provided by accounting or other...

We study the relationship between CEO pay-performance sensitivity, pay-risk sensitivity, and shareholder voting outcomes as part of the "say-on-pay" provision of the 2010 U.S. Dodd-Frank Act. Consistent with our hypothesis, we provide evidence that shareholders tend to approve of compensation...

This paper investigates the effects of board of director collusion on managerial incentives and firm values. Recent academic research hints at the social network of board of directors as an important conduit for coordinating corporate governance policies, such as managerial pay, and curbing...