Given CEOs' substantial equity portfolios, much recent literature on CEO incentives regards cash-based bonus plans as largely irrelevant, begging the question of why nearly all CEO compensation plans include such bonuses. We develop a new measure of bonus plan incentives, and document that...

An extensive literature examines whether senior executives’ contractual incentives influence their financial reporting decisions. However, little is known about whether— and how—the incentives of lower-level (or “rank-and-file”) employees, who are perhaps even more directly involved in...