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...

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...

The competitive target pay policy sets a target amount of total compensation within a specified range of the amount paid to executive peers. If such a policy were widely adopted by compensation committees, we would observe a negative cross-sectional association between the stock price...

The competitive target pay policy sets a target dollar number for total CEO compensation within a specified range of the amounts paid to a CEO’s peers chosen from similar sized firms in the same industry. If such a policy were widely adopted by compensation committees, we would observe a...

I study the economic consequences of tax deductibility limits on salaries for the design of incentive contracts. The analysis is based on an agency model in which the firm's cash flow is a function of the agent's effort and an observable random factor beyond the agent's control. According to my...

We examine how income taxes—both managerial and corporate—influence the design of firms’ debt contracts and their use of financial covenants in particular. Both levels of taxation have the potential to exacerbate conflicts of interest among creditors, shareholders, and managers and,...

This research explores the use of control rhetoric in CEO letters between the pre and post Sarbanes Oxley periods and examines financial statement users' perception of internal controls and company performance from the CEO letter. We compare the amount of control rhetoric included in CEO letters...

This study investigates how the disclosure of management compensation contracts affects executive behavior by modeling a situation in which both the principal-agent relationship and market interactions are important. We find that making the disclosure of these contracts mandatory creates...

Even though financial reporting primarily falls within the scope of the CFO responsibilities, there is considerable evidence for the CEO's influence on corporate misreporting. Regulatory initiatives such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 have therefore increased the CEO's responsibility in the...

We document the emergence of “social executives,” top executives who connect with investors directly, personally, and in real time through social media, and we study the consequences of this development for financial markets. We contend that the emergence of social executives enables...