This paper investigates the effect of superstar CEOs on their competitors. Exploiting shocks to CEO status due to prestigious media awards, we document a significant positive stock market performance of competitors of superstar CEOs subsequent to the award. The effect is more pronounced for...

This paper tests the proposition that higher tournament incentives will result in greater risk taking by senior managers in order to increase their chance of promotion to the rank of CEO. Measuring tournament incentives as the pay gap between the CEO and the next layer of senior managers, we...

I examine CEO compensation in outsourcing firms, using a new database of purchase obligations from firm 10-Ks. I find that the intensity of outsourcing can significantly explain the variations in CEO compensation; the more the firms do outsourcing, the more they pay to their CEOs. Outsourcing...

This paper builds on Rosen (1981) and Hvide (2002) to provide a simple framework that elucidates the nature of incentives in the tournaments among top executives in both the external managerial labor market for the top executive positions in other companies and within the executives' own firm...

Using a comprehensive sample of US banks for years 2001 to 2016, we split the pay gap between the CEO and rank-and-file employees into two: CEO pay gap and VP pay gap. We examine the effect on bank performance of the tournament incentives arising from these different pay gaps. We find that CEO...

We model and empirically assess industry tournament incentives for CEOs. The measures we develop for the tournament prize derive from the compensation gap between the CEO at her firm and the highest-paid CEO among similar competing firms. The model predicts that firm performance and risk...

Career concerns can limit a manager’s willingness to take risks, which can lead to excessive policy conservatism. An increase in a CEO’s ability and willingness to change jobs (CEO mobility) can diversify her human capital and reduce her conservatism. We derive several CEO mobility measures...

This note deals with the simplified case of a principal (e.g., a firm's board of directors) which delegates execution of an economic activity to a business unit (or a subsidiary firm) managed by a manager. It is assumed that the manager has no control over the cash flows injected into the unit...

This paper is a summary of the findings of analyzing pay and performance for the largest 100 companies from 2009-2011 (3 years). Performance is measured by indexed Total Shareholder Return and indexed Operating Cash Flow Growth. CEO total realized pay is used as the pay metric. The research...

Using five empirical methodologies to account for endogeneity issues, this study investigates the effects of board independence and managerial pay on the performance of 169 Saudi listed firms between 2007 and the end of 2014. Studying board independence and managerial pay utilises the main...