This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on executive compensation. We start by presenting data on the level of CEO and other top executive pay over time and across firms, the changing composition of pay; and the strength of executive incentives. We compare pay in U.S. public...

This paper analyzes the relationship between employee satisfaction and long-run stock returns. A value-weighted portfolio of the quot;100 Best Companies to Work For in Americaquot; earned an annual four-factor alpha of 3.5% from 1984-2009, and 2.1% above industry benchmarks. The results are...

The option to terminate a manager early minimizes investor losses if he is unskilled. However, it also deters a skilled manager from undertaking efficient long-term projects that risk low short-term earnings. This paper demonstrates how risky debt can overcome this tension. Leverage concentrates...

This paper identifies a broad class of situations in which the contract is both attainable in closed form and detail-neutral. The contract's functional form is independent of the noise distribution and reservation utility; moreover, when the cost of effort is pecuniary, the contract is linear in...

This paper presents a united framework for understanding the determinants of both CEOincentives and total pay levels in competitive market equilibrium. It embeds a modified principal-agent problem into a talent assignment model to endogenize both elements of compensation. The model s closed form...

This paper develops a framework that delivers tractable (i.e. closed-form) optimal contracts, with few restrictions on the utility function, cost of effort or noise distribution. By modeling the noise before the action in each period, we force the contract to provide correct incentives...