Firms routinely justify CEO compensation by benchmarking against companies with highly paid CEOs. We examine whether the 2006 regulatory requirement of disclosing compensation peers mitigated firms' opportunistic peer selection activities. We find that strategic peer benchmarking did not...

Firms regularly justify their CEOs' compensation by referencing companies with highly paid CEOs with whom they claim to compete for managerial talent. This paper examines whether the 2006 regulatory requirement of disclosing compensation peers has mitigated firms' opportunistic peer benchmarking...

Corporate donations to charities affiliated with the board's independent directors (affiliated donations) are large and mostly undetected due to lack of formal disclosure. Affiliated donations may impair independent directors' monitoring incentives. CEO compensation is on average 9.4% higher at...