Equity pay has been the primary component of managerial compensation packages at US public firms since the early 1990s. Using a comprehensive sample of top executives from 1992-2020, we estimate to what extent they trade firm equity held in their portfolios to neutralize increments in ownership...

Asset owners (principals) typically do not manage their own investments and leave this job to delegated managers (agents). What is best for the asset owner, however, is usually not best for the fund manager. Additional agency conflicts arise when the asset owner does not know the quality and...

Boards of directors are frequently criticized for their lack of monitoring in executive decision making. Increasing board effort to reduce information asymmetry between executives and shareholders is commonly viewed as desirable. This study challenges this common view by demonstrating that...

We study the relationship between CEO pay-performance sensitivity, pay-risk sensitivity, and shareholder voting outcomes as part of the "say-on-pay" provision of the 2010 U.S. Dodd-Frank Act. Consistent with our hypothesis, we provide evidence that shareholders tend to approve of compensation...

This study examines whether and how CEO equity incentives relate to financing choices (i.e., debt and leases). Using manually collected CEO compensation and lease data for a sample of large UK firms, we found evidence of a negative relationship between CEO equity incentives and firm leverage. We...

This paper investigates whether CEO pay disparity reflects efficient contracting or CEO entrenchment by exploiting an exogenous event which mandated option expensing, namely, the introduction of FAS 123R. Using a difference-in-difference approach, we find supportive evidence for the entrenchment...

We argue gender-diverse boards are associated with distinct preferences that reassure investors about their commitment to moderate risk and boost long-term corporate survival. Results suggest a strong relation between gender-diverse boards and bondholder-aligned CEO compensation components,...

Understanding CEO compensation plans is a continuing challenge for directors and investors. The disclosure of these plans is dictated by SEC rules that rely heavily on the “fair value” of awards at the time they are granted. The problem with these numbers is that they are static and do not...

The aim of the paper is to test two hypotheses: on one hand, the aim is to analyse if firm’s executive rewards can be explained just by the hierarchical structure of the firm (Model One) while on the other we want to study the correlation between the level of Chief Executive Officer (CEO)...

This paper investigates the wealth effects of private equity (PE) investor purchases of shares in German quoted companies. It is the first study to analyze these effects for the German market which is particularly interesting due to its distinct characteristics with regard to the ownership...