We explore the role of stock liquidity in influencing the composition of CEO annual pay and the sensitivity of managerial wealth to stock prices. We find that as stock liquidity goes up, the proportion of equity-based compensation in total compensation increases while the proportion of...

We examine the effect of auditor expertise on managerial equity-based compensation. Consistent with theories that predict that firms will grant more equity-based compensation to their managers when financial statement manipulation is more likely to be detected, we find strong evidence that firms...

Prior studies find inconsistent evidence regarding the effect of CEO equity incentives on financial misreporting. We argue that this inconsistency stems from not considering detection mechanisms that mitigate the effect of equity incentives on misreporting by limiting the ability of managers to...

It has been well-established that both stock prices and accounting earnings are used to evaluate and compensate CEOs. Prior studies often interpret the higher sensitivity of compensation revisions to stock prices (relative to accounting earnings) as the superior role of price formation versus...

A purported dark side to powerful equity-based incentives is that they may induce the manager to manipulate stock prices by distorting information. Recent theories predict that firms will grant more equity-based incentives to their managers when the detection of such information manipulation is...

We investigate the role of Relative Performance Evaluation (RPE) theory in CEO pay and turnover using a product similarity-based definition of peers (Hoberg and Phillips 2016). RPE predicts that firms filter out common shocks (i.e., those affecting the firm and its peers) while evaluating CEO...

We take advantage of a 2017 change in tax rules in the U.S. to re-examine whether CEOs are rewarded for luck. We examine the effect of one-off tax gains and losses associated with deferred tax assets and liabilities on CEO compensation around the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017. Relative to...