This paper surveys the recent literature on CEO compensation. The rapid rise in CEO pay over the past 30 years has sparked an intense debate about the nature of the pay-setting process. Many view the high level of CEO compensation as the result of powerful managers setting their own pay. Others...

This paper surveys the recent literature on CEO compensation. The rapid rise in CEO pay over the past 30 years has sparked an intense debate about the nature of the pay-setting process. Many view the high level of CEO compensation as the result of powerful managers setting their own pay. Others...

This paper surveys the recent literature on CEO compensation. The rapid rise in CEO pay over the past 30 years has sparked an intense debate about the nature of the pay-setting process. Many view the high level of CEO compensation as the result of powerful managers setting their own pay. Others...

Clawback provisions entitle shareholders to recover previously-awarded incentive compensation from managers involved in accounting manipulation or misconduct. I study theoretically and empirically the impact of clawback provisions on the horizon of executive pay when shareholders face clawback...

Risk-neutral individuals take more risky decisions when they have limited liability. Risk-neutral managers may not when acting as agents under contract and taking costly actions to acquire information before taking decisions. Limited liability makes it optimal to increase the reward for outcomes...

Standard principal-agent theory predicts that large firms should not use employee stock options and other stock-based compensation to provide incentives to non-executive employees. Yet, business practitioners appear to believe that stock-based compensation improves incentives, and mounting...

This paper examines the incentive provision when the agent can respond to risk by exerting effort to collect information about the underlying state and making corresponding decisions. Such effort is shown to be more valuable in a riskier environment and incentives can increase with...

Agency theory is one of the most important foundational theories in management research, but it rests on tenuous cognitive assumptions. We combine classical agency theory with a realistic theory of the intrinsically imperfect human potential for interpersonal sensemaking. This allows us to...

Following Oyer (2004) and Rajgopal, Shevlin and Zamora (2006), we provide evidence that the level of stock option compensation results from outside opportunities in the managerial labor market for a sample of 3,214 CEO-year observations from S&P1500 companies between 1996 and 2010. We argue that...

Adverse selection harms workers, but benefits firms able to identify talent. An informed intermediary expropriates its agents' ability by threatening to fire and expose them to undervaluation of their skill. Agents' track record gradually reduces the intermediary's information advantage. We show...