This commentary, a contribution to the Harvard Business Review Online Forum on the CEO's role in fixing the capitalist system, makes the argument that for an incentive system to usefully support a firm's long-term, society focused agenda, companies need to lessen their reliance on financial...

We examine the relation between R&D intensity and the weights on ability indicators and financial performance measures in CEO compensation. The CEO’s technology-related ability is likely more important in R&D intensive firms. Therefore, we predict that these firms place higher weights on...

I examine the association between CEOs’ after-tax incentives and their firms’ level of tax avoidance. Economic theory holds that firms should compensate CEOs on an after-tax basis when the expected tax savings generated from additional incentive alignment outweigh the incremental...

This paper provides evidence about CEO remuneration structure and levels, as well as key CEO and board attributes, for a large sample of listed Australian firms during the 2004-2006 period. As such it provides recent evidence about how Australian executives are rewarded and permits observation...

Despite the many undesirable outcomes of corporate misconduct, scholars have an inadequate understanding of corporate misconduct's causes and mechanisms. We extend the behavioral theory of the firm, which traditionally assumes away the possibility of firm impropriety, to develop hypotheses...

I study how board and institutional monitoring affect the structure of equity-based compensation, specifically, the split between restricted stock and options. I find that firms adjust the structure of equity-based compensation to manage the total contractual incentives provided to their CEOs....

We examine how CEO compensation is affected by the presence of busy and overlap directors. We find that CEOs at firms with more busy directors receive greater total pay, fixed-salary and equity-linked pay and exhibit higher pay-performance (delta) and pay-risk (vega) sensitivities. Our results...

Accounting research on choices of inventory valuation methods has focused on various consequences of two extreme methods: LIFO and FIFO. The main consequence studies relate to effects of the differences in taxes payable between the two methods on security prices. However, tax consequences appear...

In the wake of the backdating scandal, many firms began awarding options at scheduled times each year. Scheduling option grants eliminates backdating, but creates other agency problems. CEOs that know the dates of upcoming scheduled option grants have an incentive to temporarily depress stock...

This paper studies costly pre-CEO executive skill accumulation by executives, followed by stable matching between firms and CEOs. An increase in the heterogeneity of firm size relative to executive type induces a decrease in the informational effect of skill accumulation, resulting in...