In December 2006, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued new rules that require the disclosure of the use of relative performance evaluation (RPE) in CEO compensation contracts. We find that about a third of the sample firms use RPE in the CEO compensation contract. On average, RPE users...

Using campaign contributions to measure CEO's political connections, we find that a one standard deviation increase in political connections is associated with a 9% increase in CEOs' annual compensation and a 17% decrease in his pay-performance sensitivity. Political rents increase with the...

This paper examines both empirically and theoretically the growth of U.S. executive pay during the period 1993-2003. During this period, pay has grown much beyond the increase that could be explained by changes in firm size, performance and industry classification. Had the relationship of...

Eighty-nine percent of S&P500 companies report benchmarking CEO pay components. Analyzing a panel of CEO compensation data entailing 1,251 S&P 1500 firms during 2007-2013, we find that: 1) total compensation benchmarking less effectively explains CEO compensation than does component-of-pay...