In this study, I summarize the current state of executive compensation, discuss measurement and incentive issues, document recent trends in executive pay in both U.S. and international firms, and analyze the evolution of executive pay over the past century. Most recent analyses of executive...

We survey directors and investors on the objectives, constraints, and determinants of CEO pay. 67% of directors would sacrifice shareholder value to avoid controversy on CEO pay, implying they face significant constraints other than participation and incentive compatibility. These constraints...

We examine the influence of proxy advisors on firms’ shareholder engagement behavior. Our analyses exploit a quasi-natural experiment using Say-On-Pay voting outcomes near a threshold that triggers a review of engagement activities by Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS). Firms receiving...

Analyzing data from approximately 1.5 million employees across 1,108 established public and private US companies, we find that employee beliefs about their firm's purpose is weaker in public companies. This difference is most pronounced within the salaried middle and hourly ranks, rather than...

Understanding CEO compensation plans is a continuing challenge for directors and investors. The disclosure of these plans is dictated by SEC rules that rely heavily on the “fair value” of awards at the time they are granted. The problem with these numbers is that they are static and do not...

Equity pay has been the primary component of managerial compensation packages at US public firms since the early 1990s. Using a comprehensive sample of top executives from 1992-2020, we estimate to what extent they trade firm equity held in their portfolios to neutralize increments in ownership...

We examine chief executive officer (CEO) career and compensation changes for large firms filing for Chapter 11. One-third of the incumbent CEOs maintain executive employment, and these CEOs experience a median compensation change of zero. However, incumbent CEOs leaving the executive labor...

Despite its potential role, CEO quality has been inadequately addressed in CEO compensation research. Using an Australian sample of 571 firms, this paper provides evidence that CEO quality, measured by CEO reputation and tenure, has a positive effect on firm performance, and explains...

In this Article we submit that the compensation structures at banks before the financial crisis were not necessarily flawed and that recent reforms in this area largely reflect already existing best practices. In Part I we review recent empirical studies on corporate governance and executive pay...

We examine the effect of say on pay regulation in the United Kingdom (UK). Consistent with the view that shareholders regard say on pay as a value-creating mechanism, the regulation's announcement triggered a positive stock price reaction at firms with weak penalties for poor performance. UK...