In the aftermath of the Mannesmann case the German corporate law of executive compensation has been increasingly relying on incentive-based payments until the recent financial crisis. By including benchmarks for reasonable compensation in § 87 para. 1 of the Stock Corporation Act (AktG) as...

Equity-based compensation causes increases in firms' share count and dilutes Earnings Per Share (EPS), which provides firms with an incentive to raise EPS using either share buybacks or earnings management. We employ a regression discontinuity framework to provide evidence of a causal link...