Despite the importance of audit committee independence in ensuring the integrity of the financial reporting process, recent research suggests that even when audit committees meet regulatory independence requirements, certain factors, such as undue influence by the CEO over the selection of the...

Agency theory argues that pay-performance sensitivity should be negatively associated with risk. Yet, empirical studies have reported mixed findings on this relationship, which may be attributable to such confounding factors as different levels of delegation and monitoring costs. Extending prior...

I investigate the impact of voluntary adoption of clawback provisions on managerial ability. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC, 2003) describes the adoption of clawback through the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) Section 304 as an action to improve the “tone at the top”. In line with...

According to optimal contracting theory, compensation contracts are effective in solving the agency problem between stockholders and managers. Executive compensation is naturally related to firm performance. However, contracts are not always perfect. Managers may exert influence on the...

This paper examines executive compensation in the subsidiaries of business groups in China. Analyzing a sample of China business groups (the so-called 'XiZu JiTuan' in Chinese) from 2003 to 2012, we find convincing evidence of the use of Relative Performance Evaluation (RPE) in the executive...

Understanding executive compensation and its effects helps design better organizations. Research on this area is thus of paramount importance. For large US companies, the ExecuComp database offers access to standardized and comprehensive executive compensation data. Hence, research on executive...

This paper studies the connection between risk taking and executive compensation in financial institutions. A theoretical model of shareholders, debtholders, depositors, and an executive suggests that 1) in principle, excessive risk taking (in the form of risk shifting) may be addressed by...

This paper empirically investigates if corporate governance practices affect the resources firms devote to R&D. Two databases - one on governance ratings and the other on R&D intensity - are merged to obtain a multi-country, multi-sector sample of 279 European companies involved in R&D...

In this paper we describe the important features of executive compensation in the US from 1993 to 2006. Some confirm what has been found for earlier periods and some are novel. Notable facts are that: the compensation distribution is highly skewed; each year, a sizeable fraction of chief...