Since passage of the Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, the government has been explicitly and implicitly regulating the compensation of top managers at a number of U.S. banks. In addition, bank regulators have added evaluations of bank management compensation packages to the list of factors...

This paper evaluates the effects of binding regulatory restraints on the rate of performance-based management compensation within a banking framework in which the primary function of bank management teams is to monitor loans in order to eliminate deadweight default losses. Available management...