We study the role of firm- and manager-specific heterogeneities in executive compensation. We decompose the variation in executive compensation and find that time invariant firm and especially manager fixed effects explain a majority of the variation in executive pay. We then show that in many...

Executive pay fell during the 1940s, marking the last notable decrease in the past 70 years. We study this decline using a new panel dataset on the remuneration of top executives in 246 firms. We find that government regulation--including explicit salary restrictions and taxation--had, at best,...

In this paper, I consider the evidence for three common perceptions of U.S. public company CEO pay and corporate governance: (1) CEOs are overpaid and their pay keeps increasing; (2) CEOs are not paid for their performance; and (3) boards do not penalize CEOs for poor performance. While average...

We present a model in which managers are risk-averse and firms compete for scarce managerial talent ("alpha"). When managers are not mobile across firms, firms provide efficient compensation, which allows for learning about managerial talent and for insurance of low-quality managers. When...

In this paper we describe the important features of executive compensation in the US from 1993 to 2006. Some confirm what has been found for earlier periods and some are novel. Important facts about compensation are that: the compensation distribution is highly skewed; each year, a sizeable...

We investigate the relationship between CEO centrality -- the relative importance of the CEO within the top executive team in terms of ability, contribution, or power -- and the value and behavior of public firms. Our proxy for CEO centrality is the fraction of the top-five compensation captured...

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 finds that globalization is contributing to the rapid increase in executive compensation over the last few decades. Employing comprehensive data on top executives at major U.S. companies, we show that their compensation is increasing with exports and foreign direct investment, as well...

We examine how an increase in stock option grants affects CEO risk-taking. The overall net effect of option grants is theoretically ambiguous for risk-averse CEOs. To overcome the endogeneity of option grants, we exploit institutional features of multi-year compensation plans, which generate two...

The dramatic rise in CEO compensation during the 1990s and early 2000s is a longstanding puzzle. In this paper, we show that much of the rise can be explained by a tendency of firms to grant the same number of options each year. Number-rigidity implies that the grant-date value of option awards...