We examine how government ownership affects the top management team's (TMT) pay dispersion and how such TMT pay dispersion affects subsequent firm performance. We test three competing views on the influences of government ownership, referred to as the agency view, the equity view, and the...

Recent accounting research provides evidence that similar profit-based compensation incentives are used in for-profit and nonprofit hospitals. Because charity care reduces profits, such incentives should lead for-profit hospital managers to reduce charity care levels. Nonprofit hospital...

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...

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...

We study changes in the design of CEO contracts when firms transition from being public with dispersed ownership to being private with strong principals in the form of private equity sponsors. These principals redesign many, but far from all, contract features. There is no evidence that they...