This study investigates some of the most important avenues that mangers use to manipulate the value of stock option grants. It also compares the use of these avenues in firms that issue scheduled options and in firms that issue irregular options. We document that before Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX),...

We investigate the impact of say-on-pay on 2010 executive compensation, finding affected firms reduced compensation and made it more performance-based, with that decrease being greater for firms that previously overpaid their CEOs. We also find the percentage of votes cast against executive pay...

This study investigates the impact of job complexity and firm, as well as CFO-specific performance, on CFO compensation. We find job complexity and overall firm performance affects both CFO salary and bonus, while CFO-specific performance affects CFO bonus. Specifically, we find that CFOs are...

Prior research suggests an asymmetric relation between CEO cash compensation and firm performance as measured by market-adjusted stock returns. As discussed by Leone et al. (2006), the underlying rationale for this asymmetry is the difficulty in the ex post settling- up of cash compensation. We...