We examine differences in CEO achievement of EPS goals set separately through analyst forecasts and firm bonus plans. Having different goals for the same performance metric enables us to assess their relative importance in incentivizing CEOs. We find CEOs frequently achieve analyst forecasts,...

Among the controversies in corporate governance, perhaps none is more heated or widely debated across society than that of CEO pay. The views that American citizens have on CEO pay is centrally important because public opinion influences political decisions that shape tax, economic, and...

Scrutiny of CEO pay increases during times of economic stress, when it is not clear how much pay CEOs should receive when corporate profitability suffers due to an unforeseen decline in the operating environment. On the one hand, the board might want to preserve incentives, recognizing that a...

CEO compensation is a highly controversial subject. While most company directors believe that CEO pay is not a problem, the majority of the American public believes that it is. The difficulties that boards face in justifying CEO pay levels in some ways stem from the challenge of quantifying how...

The two major paradigmsin the theoretical agency literature aremoral hazard (i.e., hidden action)and adverseselection (i.e., hiddeninformation). Prior research typically solves these problemsin isolation, as opposed to simultaneouslyincorporating both adverseselection and moral hazard features....

Say on pay is the practice of granting shareholders the right to vote on a company's executive compensation program at the annual shareholder meeting. Under the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, publicly traded companies in the U.S. are required to adopt say on pay. Advocates of this approach believe that...

This study examines the effects of shareholder support for equity compensation plans on subsequent chief executive officer (CEO) compensation. Using cross-sectional regression, instrumental variable, and regression discontinuity research designs, we find little evidence that either lower...

Prior research argues that a manager whose wealth is more sensitive to changes in the firm's stock price has a greater incentive to misreport. However, if the manager is risk-averse and misreporting increases both equity values and equity risk, the sensitivity of the manager's wealth to changes...

We examine CEO turnover and succession planning using a unique and highly comprehensive data set from the company exechange. Exechange applies a novel methodology that evaluates the circumstances surrounding a CEO departure to determine the degree to which the turnover event might be voluntary...