Using personnel data, we compare worker productivity under a relative incentive scheme -where pay is based on individual productivity relative to the average productivity of the group- to productivity under piece rates. We find that productivity is at least 50% higher under piece rates. Further...

An explanation for motivation crowding-out phenomena is developed in a social preferences framework. Besides selfish and fair or altruistic types a third type of agents is introduced: These ‘conformists' have social preferences if they believe that sufficiently many of the others do too. When...

We study worker and firm behavior in an environment where worker effort could depend on co-workers’ wages. Theoretically, we show that an increase in workers’ ‘concerns’ with coworkers’ wages should lead profit-maximizing firms to compress wages under quite general conditions. However,...

We consider a managerial optimal framework for top executive compensation, where top management sets their own compensation subject to limited entrenchment, instead of the conventional setting where such compensation is set by a board that maximizes firm value. Top management would like to pay...

The quot;Lake Wobegon Effect,quot; which is widely cited as a potential cause for rising CEO pay, is said to occur because no firm wants to admit to having a CEO who is below average, and so no firm allows its CEO's pay package to lag market expectations. We develop a game-theoretic model of...

We investigate the distribution of pay in the top executive team in public companies. In particular, we study the CEO's pay slice (CPS), defined as the fraction of the aggregate top-five total compensation paid to the CEO. The level of a firm's CPS might reflect the relative centrality of the...

This paper reviews recent evidence analyzing the link between earnings management and corporate tax avoidance and considers the implications for how policymakers should evaluate the financial reporting environment facing firms. A real-world tax shelter is dissected to illustrate how tax shelter...

Section 403 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act accelerates the reporting deadline of executive stock option grants to be within two business days after the grants. This study investigates the effect of Section 403 on the extent of CEO influence over grant date stock prices aimed at enhancing the value of...

This paper provides new evidence on the relationship between managerial incentives and firm risk using a hand-collected database of 3307 executive year observations. We find that the relation between pay performance sensitivity and firm risk exhibits a nonlinear relationship with firm size: for...

We study the extent to which decisions to expand firm size are associated with increases in subsequent CEO compensation. Investigating a broad universe of firm-expansion choices, we find, controlling for performance and firm characteristics, a positive and economically meaningful correlation...